;E r; rANTS 



; ' ■ :■;■/;-_ 





Class : 

Book 



Copyright^ 



COHfRIGHT DEPOSIK 



Protestants 2freliebe 



BY 

C. W. WINCHESTER, A.M., D.D. 

Author of "The Gospel Kodak Abroad," 
"The Welle of Salvation" and "The Victories of Wesley Cattle. 




THE CHRISTIAN WITNESS COMPANY 
CHICAGO. ILLINOIS 



2V 



Copyright. 1915. 

BY 

The Christian Witness Company 



JUL -2 1915 

CLA401630 



PREFACE 

This book does not need a long preface, if it 
needs any. The title tells what it is. The Prot- 
estant Church in America had almost ceased to 
protest against the false doctrines and evil prac- 
tices of Rome. It had become the prevalent notion 
that the Roman religion was about as good as the 
religion of the so-called Protestant churches; 
that the Romanists and the Protestants were on 
the way to heaven in parallel roads; that their 
aims and spirit were essentially one; that there 
ought to be no antagonism between them; and 
that Protestants should be careful not to say any- 
thing unbrotherly of the system which has its 
headquarters on the banks of the Tiber. That is 
not the prevalent opinion now. Protestants are 
waking up to the fact that there is a radical and 
everlasting difference between what they call 
Christianity and the thing to which Rome gives 
that name; that Christianity and Romanism are 
essentially separate and distinct religions. This 
awakening began only about three years ago. It 
is increasing every day. To help it on, this book 
was written. 



Rome boldly and arrogantly declares that it is 
her purpose to make this country wholly "Cath- 
olic." In view of that fact, all Protestants ought 
to know what the system, falsely called "Cath- 
olicism" is. To help them to such knowledge is 
the aim of this volume. They ought to know 
where they stand and be as ready to defend their 
position as Rome is to assail. 

I have written in no spirit of hatred toward 
individual Romanists, but with a strong desire to 
"contend earnestly for the faith once for all de- 
livered to the saints." 

C. W. Winchester. 

Buffalo, N. Y,, April 29, 1915, 



CHRIST IS THE ONLY HEAD OF THE 

CHURCH 

" * * * * The Lord is gracious, to whom com- 
ing, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of 
men, but chosen of God, and precious, ye also, as 
living stones, are built up a spiritual house, an 
holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices, ac- 
ceptable to God by Jesus Christ" — I Peter ii 13-5. 



That Christ is the only head of the Church is 
so clearly and constantly taught in the Holy 
Scriptures that no intelligent and honest student 
of the Bible can doubt the fact for a moment. To 
quote the scriptures which say that Christ is the 
head of the Church would seem unnecessary. If 
he is not the head and lord and ruler and supreme 
teacher of the Church, who is? But let us have 
a few words from Holy Writ on this subject. 
Jesus himself says : "I am the true vine." Here 
he hints at the fact, which must have been known 
to him, that men would arise claiming authority 
to teach and rule the Church. "I am the vine, ye 
are the branches. He that abideth in me, and I 

5 



6 What Protestants Believe 

in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for 
without me ye can do nothing." Paul, writing 
to the Church at Ephesus, says that God "raised" 
Christ "from the dead, and set him at his own 
right hand in the heavenly places, far above all 
principality and power and might and dominion 
and every name that is named, not only in this 
world, but also in that which is to come, and hath 
put all things under his feet, and gave him to be 
the head over all things unto the Church, which 
is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in 
all." Again, to the same Church he writes: 
"Christ is the head of the Church." To the 
Colossians he writes: "He" — meaning Christ, 
as you will see if you look at the 18th verse of 
the first chapter — "is the head of the body the 
Church." In the book of Revelation the Apostle 
John describes a beautiful vision which he had on 
the Isle of Patmos* He saw Jesus, in his glorified 
body, standing in the center of a circle of seven 
golden candlesticks, holding seven stars in his 
right hand. John wondered what it all meant, and 
so Jesus himself explained the mystery. He said : 
"The seven stars are the angels" — I think he 
meant pastors — "of the seven churches ; and the 



What Protestants Believe 7 

seven candlesticks are the seven churches." What 
a beautiful conception of the relation of the 
blessed Savior to his people here on the earth. 
Each church is a candlestick, or lampstand, shed- 
ding forth the light of truth on the darkness of 
the world. Jesus walks around among the 
churches, trimming the lights and supplying 
fresh oil. At the same time, he holds and carries 
the pastors in his right hand. How absurd and 
blasphemous for any one of those stars, no matter 
how brilliant, to claim to be anything but a star 
in the hand of him who is the Head of the Church. 
Christ is the only Head of the Church. The 
Church is not any sect, or denomination, or organ- 
ized body of men. It is that great company which 
includes all who have saving faith in the Lord 
Jesus Christ. It is the Holy Catholic, or Univer- 
sal Church, which we mention every Sunday 
morning, when we recite the Apostles' Creed. 
That Church has no head but Christ. Of course, 
when any number of Christians organize them- 
selves into a denomination, like the Roman 
Catholics, or the Baptists, or the Methodists, or 
into a local society, like St. Mary's Roman 
Catholic Church of Blanktown, or the First 



8 What Protestants Believe 

Methodist Episcopal Church of the same city, for 
the purpose of carrying on the work of God and 
converting the world, there must be officers to 
preside over the organization. But no one of 
those officers is the head of the Church of God. 
No one of them has any authority to say what 
Christians shall believe or do, except as he can 
show, from the Bible, that Jesus, speaking with 
his own lips, or through the mouth of an inspired 
apostle or prophet, taught this or that, or gave 
this or that command. 

Along the course of the centuries there have 
been many persons who have claimed to be the 
only head of the Church on earth and the special 
and sole representative of God among men. Ann 
Lee, about 1780, professed to be the Universal 
Mother of the Church, and the incarnation of 
divine power as fully as Jesus Christ was at his 
first appearing. On that assumption she founded 
the sect of Shakers. Joe Smith founded the Mor- 
mon sect, in 1830, and claimed to be the only 
Head of God's Church on earth. There was no 
salvation to any man who did not obey him, and 
his teachings were of equal authority with those 
of Jesus Christ. John Alexander Dowie of Chi- 



What Protestants Believe 9 

cago, a few years ago, started a new religion, and 
commanded all Christians to look to him as their 
teacher and to put all their property and their 
lives in his hands. A man in the State of Maine, 
named Sanford, made a similar claim and is now 
in State prison because of the unlawful means he 
took to assert his authority. "Mother" Eddy has 
been exalted by herself and her followers to the 
headship of the Church, and her writings are 
read with the Bible, on the Sabbath Day, as of 
equal authority with that Book. Indeed, the 
Bible has no value except as it is explained, or 
explained away, by Mrs. Eddy's book, which all 
her followers must purchase, at five dollars a copy. 
But of all men who have ever claimed to be the 
Head of the Church, the Pope of Rome is most 
worthy of our consideration. Our Roman Cath- 
olic friends declare that the Bishop of Rome is the 
Vicegerent of the Almighty, the Representative 
of Jesus Christ on the earth, the sole earthly head 
of the Church, the Ruler and Lawgiver and Ad- 
ministrator of the Church. He is the infallible 
teacher of truth. When he sits in his official chair 
as Pope and tells Christians what they ought to 
believe and do, his words are the very words of 



10 What Protestants Believe 

God and must be accepted as such on pain of 
eternal damnation. He is above all human rulers 
and all human laws. The supreme allegiance of 
every human being is due to him. He has the 
right from God to dethrone, or unseat, or disrobe 
any king, or emperor, or president, or judge. If 
his will and the will of any human magistrate con- 
flict, every person on earth is bound to obey him. 
In a word, he is the supreme ruler of the human 
race, in everything. If any human magistrate or 
law is binding on us, it is because the Pope has 
given his sanction or silent consent. He can, at 
any time, suspend or abolish any human law and 
put down any and every human ruler and govern- 
ment. Whoever denies these statements shall be 
everlastingly damned in hell. Our Roman Cath- 
olic friends have given their Pope such titles as 
these "His Holiness," "Most Holy," "Bishop of 
Bishops," "Universal Bishop," "Supreme Pon- 
tiff," "Vicar of Christ," "God on Earth" and 
"The Lord God." They have placed a triple crown 
upon his head, three crowns in one. They repre- 
sent earth, Heaven and Hell; and they call him 
"King of Earth," "King of Heaven" and "King 
of Hell." Whenever he goes abroad, he is borne 



What Protestants Believe 11 

on the shoulders of men, surrounded by a band 
of soldiers fully armed, and the people fall pros- 
trate on their faces. When he gives private 
audiences, the persons thus honored kneel and 
kiss his toe. Were he the very eternal God, 
clothed in human flesh, he could not receive 
higher honors than are freely accorded to him. 

The Roman Catholic theologians say that the 
Papacy was established by God himself ; that it is 
as divine as the Church, as the Christian religion, 
as the throne of Jehovah itself. They insist that 
it is essential to the existence of Christianity; that 
it is the very center and heart and soul of God's 
kingdom on the earth. The Papacy stands on a 
tripod. Its first foot is the primacy of Peter. The 
Romish theologians declare that Jesus Christ 
made the Apostle Peter the supreme head of the 
Church on earth; that he clothed him with full 
power to rule the Church, to fix its creed at every 
point, to dictate the conduct of all its members, 
to appoint its ministers, to open and shut the gates 
of Heaven and to act, in all respects, as the Vice- 
gerent of the Almighty. The only Scripture 
foundation for this doctine, which its advocates 
pretend to show, is the words of Christ to Peter : 



12 What Protestants Believe 

"Thou are Peter, and upon this rock will I build 
my Church, and the gates of Hell shall not pre- 
vail against it. And I will give unto thee the 
keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever 
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, 
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth 
shall be loosed in Heaven." Let us see 
what Jesus actually said. If we turn to the orig- 
inal Greek, we find that the words of Jesus 
were: *Th u art Petros, and on this petra will 
I build my Church." We cannot believe that 
our Saviour would use two different words in one 
sentence, intending that they should have the 
same meaning. He used two words. Therefore, 
he intended to convey two thoughts. The word 
petros means a stone, or a piece of rock broken 
off from a larger mass. Petra means a massive, 
living rock, a part of the great, united frame- 
work of the globe. What Jesus really said was, 
"Thou art (or shall be; Christ's words were 
prophetic) a stone, a rock, in thy character; and 
on this great underlying, immutable truth, which 
thou hast just declared, namely that I am the 
Christ, the Son of the living God, will I build 
my Church." If he had meant that he was go- 



What Protestants Believe 13 

ing to build his Church on Peter personally, he 
would have made it clear beyond all doubt by say- 
ing: "Thou art Peter, and on thee, Peter, will 
I build my Church." The Apostle Peter is not 
the foundation on which the Church of Christ has 
been built. That notion is utterly repugnant to 
the whole tenor of New Testament teaching. The 
foundation is the truth which the Holy Spirit 
revealed to Peter that day — the Messiahship and 
divinity of Jesus Christ — or the personification of 
that truth, Christ himself. He who puts Peter 
in the place of Christ commits the sin of sacri- 
lege. Paul says : "Other foundation can no man 
lay than is laid, which is Jesus Christ." Writing 
to the Ephesians, Paul says : "Ye are laid upon 
the foundation of the apostles and prophets, 
Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone." 
The expression "the foundation of the apostles 
and prophets" does not mean the foundation 
which is composed of the apostles and prophets ; 
but the foundation which the apostles and 
prophets have laid by preaching the truth 
concerning Christ. This Republic is built on the 
foundation of Franklin and Adams and Jeffer- 
son and Washington and Hamilton and others like 



14 What Protestants Believe 

them. But that foundation is not Franklin and 
Adams and Jefferson and Washington and Ham- 
ilton themselves, but the great political truths 
which they proclaimed to the world. The Chris- 
tian Church, like the American Republic, has a 
better foundation than any mere man, or score of 
men. How beautifully and clearly our first quota- 
tion explains the matter. "The Lord Jesus Christ 
is gracious, to whom coming, as to a stone, dis- 
allowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and 
precious, ye also, as living stones, are built up into 
a spiritual house, an holy priesthood to offer spir- 
itual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ/' 
This language is figurative. It represents the 
Church of God as a building, a temple. The 
stones of which it is built are living stones. "Ye 
also" are the "living stones." This epistle is ad- 
dressed to the "strangers scattered throughout 
Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithinia." 
Every Christian is a stone in God's Temple, the 
Church. According to our Roman Catholic 
friends, Peter, who wrote these words, was the 
first Pope, the one stone on which the Church 
was built. Yet he says nothing about himself; 
but does say that all Christians are stones, and 



What Protestants Believe 15 

then goes on, after our text, to say that Christ 
is the chief corner stone. All the stones Peter 
knew anything about were Christ and all Chris- 
tians. Peter was one of those stones; but Peter 
personally is no more the stone on which the 
Church is built than the humblest Christian man, 
or woman, or child in all the lands and all the 
ages. As we pass along, I want you to notice 
who are the real priests in God's Church. The 
"priests" of Rome claim to be the only priests 
and to hold the keys to Heaven. But Peter, 
Rome's "Supreme Pontiff," says ye, all Chris- 
tians, are "a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual 
sacrifices, acceptable to God." Christ is our Great 
High Priest. Under him every believer is a 
priest. The sacrifices which he offers are "spir- 
itual sacrifices," the "sacrifice of praise to God," 
as we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The 
man who preaches the gospel, whether it be in 
the Methodist, or Presbyterian, or Roman Cath- 
olic Church, is no more a priest than the hum- 
blest believer who sits in the pew. We, gospel 
preachers, are not the successors of the Jewish 
priests ; but rather of the ancient prophets. 



16 What Protestants Believe 

If Jesus intended to say to Peter what our 
Roman Catholic friends say he did, he was guilty 
of the literary sin of using a mixed metaphor 
of a very bad kind. According to the Romanist 
expounders, he said : "Thou, Peter, art the foun- 
dation of my Church and to the foundation of 
the edifice will I give the keys of the same." How 
absurd to talk about giving the keys of a building 
to the foundation of the building ! Who believes 
that the Great Teacher would make such a silly 
blunder ? 

The other part of Christ's words to Peter need 
a little attention. "I will give unto thee the keys 
of the kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever thou 
shalt bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, 
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall 
be loosed in Heaven." There is not enough in 
those words to warrant all the monstrous and 
blasphemous claims of the Papacy. The Master 
addressed almost the same words to all the 
apostles and, I think, to all Christians. In speak- 
ing of Church discipline, Jesus said: "Verily I 
say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth 
shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever ye 
shall loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven. 



What Protestants Believe 17 

Again I say imto you, That if two or three of you 
agree on earth as touching anything that they 
shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father 
which is in Heaven." We may not understand all 
that those words mean (although they seem to 
authorize the Church to expell unworthy mem- 
bers, and to promise answers to united prayer) ; 
but there is no shadow of reason to believe that 
they give to any man, or set of men, the right 
to shut or open the gates of eternal life. 

The fathers of the Church interpreted Christ's 
words to Peter in the manner in which they have 
just been explained. Augustine, one of the very 
highest authorities, according to Rome herself, 
says : "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock which 
thou hast confessed, upon this which thou hast 
acknowledged, saying, Thou art Christ, the Son 
of the living God/ I will build my Church : that 
is upon myself, the Son of the living God, I will 
build my Church." 

An unanswerable argument against the doc- 
trine of the primacy of Peter is the fact that it 
is nowhere hinted at in the New Testament, if 
not in the passage under consideration. I do not 
forget the words of the risen Christ to Peter at 



18 What Protestants Believe 

the lake, "Feed my sheep ; feed my lambs/' But 
Christ has given that commission to all ministers 
of the gospel. He singled out Peter on that oc- 
casion because he had proven false to his trust 
and needed to be re-commissioned. The doctrine 
that Peter is the head of the Church and the vice- 
gerent of Jehovah is so very important, and has 
so close a connection with the supreme question, 
"What must I do to be saved ?" that it would cer- 
tainly be found in the book of Acts and in the 
Epistles. Everybody knows that not the slightest 
trace of it can be found anywhere in those writ- 
ings. Paul wrote two long letters for the pur- 
pose of explaining the way of salvation. Why 
did he not tell us that there is no salvation outside 
of the fellowship of Peter, and that the keys to 
Heaven and everlasting life are hung to Peter's 
girdle? The Epistle to the Colossians is full of 
the thought of the pre-eminence of Christ. Why 
did not Paul add this : "But I would remind you 
of the very important fact that my fellow apostle, 
Peter, is head over all under Christ, and I would 
have you all listen to what he says." In his first 
letter to the Church at Corinth he refers to the 
sad divisions in that congregation and says : 



What Protestants Believe 19 

"Everyone of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of 
Apollos ; and I of Cephas ; and I of Christ/' What 
a grand opportunity that was to impress upon 
the minds of those dear brethren the exceedingly 
important truth that we are all of Cephas; that 
he is the head of the Church, the vicegerent of 
Christ. Why did he not? There can be only 
one reason: Paul had never thought of such a 
thing. The primacy of Peter was never dreamed 
of in apostolic times. Peter wrote two letters. 
The first begins, "Peter, an apostle of Jesus 
Christ." The other begins, "Simon Peter, a serv- 
ant and an apostle of Jesus Christ." Why did 
he not write, "Peter, the first of the apostles, the 
head of the Church, the Vicegerent of the Al- 
mighty?" There is not a word in either letter 
which suggests the thought that he was a whit 
above his brother apostles, or the humblest be- 
liever in all the world. Can we imagine the pres- 
ent pope writing a letter to the Church and not 
alluding to himself as the Supreme Bishop and 
Head of the Kingdom of God? If Peter was a 
pope, he had a very different spirit from all his 
successors. 



20 What Protestants Believe 

Not only do not the Acts of the Apostles and 
the Epistles teach the doctrine of the primacy of 
Peter, directly or indirectly, but they plainly dis- 
prove it. When Peter came back to Jerusalem, 
after preaching in the house of Cornelius, he was 
called to an account for eating with gentiles. How 
could the other apostles and Christians question 
the action of an infallible pope? When the first 
Ecumenical Council (as the Papists call it) was 
held at Jerusalem, who presided? According to 
Papal doctrine, it should have been Peter ; nobody 
else had any right to occupy the chair. But it 
was not Peter. It was a man who was not even 
one of the Twelve. It was James, the brother of 
Jesus. Who settled the question under discus- 
sion ? It ought to have been Peter. Indeed, since 
the proclamation of the doctrine of Papal Infalli- 
bility, a Church Council has no authority, and 
can never be held, except to receive and register 
the pope's decree; and, according to Rome, that 
was the belief and practice of the apostolic 
Church. But, as a matter of fact, Pope Peter 
was as silent as though he had been nothing but 
the janitor of the building, while Brother James 
said : "Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble 



What Protestants Believe 21 

not them which from among the gentiles are 
turned to God/' Where was the doctrine of the 
primacy of Peter that day? It had never been 
thought of. If Peter had been pope, he would 
have spoken right out in the meeting (he was that 
sort of a man) and would have said : "Hold on 
there, Brother James, I am the head of the 
Church. Jesus told me at Ceasarea Philippi that 
he would found the Church on me and give me 
the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. You sit 
down while I settle this question." 

How was it that Paul dared to speak out 
against the Supreme Pontiff at Antioch? He 
says: "When Peter was come to Antioch, I 
withstood him to the face, because he was to be 
blamed." Who dares to withstand the pope in 
these days and blame him to the face ? No ! The 
primacy of Peter is a lie, the pestiferous growth 
of the dark ages, foisted upon the Church through 
the ambition of selfish and wicked men. The first 
foot of the Roman tripod is nowhere and nothing. 

The second foot of the papal tripod is that 
Peter was the first Bishop of Rome. For this 
claim there is no proof. Certainly there is no 
Scripture proof. The New Testament nowhere 



22 What Protestants Believe 

says that Peter was the Bishop or Pastor of the 
Church at Rome. In the first place, it cannot be 
shown that Peter was ever in Rome. Ireneaus, 
in the second century, is the only authority that 
supports the assertion that Peter visited the capi- 
tal of the world. There are later writers who re- 
peat what he said. All that Ireneaus says is that 
"the Church at Rome was the greatest and most 
ancient and was founded by the two most glorious 
apostles, Peter and Paul." But we know that 
the good man was mistaken. We know that Paul 
had nothing to do with the founding of the 
Church at Rome, for it was founded and estab- 
lished long before he wrote the Epistle to the Ro- 
mans, and he had never been there up to that 
time. Ireneaus also convicts himself of error in 
saying that the Church of Rome was the most 
ancient of all the churches. Jerusalem had a 
church long before Rome did. Ireneaus gives 
tradition as his authority. He caught up a float- 
ing, apocryphal story, and gave it the credit of 
his name. As he was in error on these points, 
we cannot accept what he says about Peter. Peter 
may have visited Rome; he may have lost his 
head there (for it is exhibited, once a year, along 



What Protestants Believe 23 

with Paul's, in the Church of San Giovanni in 
Laterano). But his stay there must have been 
very brief, and he could not have been Pastor of 
the Church. If he was Bishop of Rome, his epis- 
copate must have covered the period in which 
Paul wrote to the Romans and endured two ex- 
tended terms of imprisonment. To Rome he 
wrote one letter, and from Rome he wrote six. 
In those seven letters he sends greetings to and 
from forty-eight different persons. Is it not 
strange that Peter, the Pastor of the Church, is 
not even mentioned ? In the letter to the Romans 
Paul sends his love to twenty-seven persons, most 
of them very obscure. How do you account for 
the fact that a man so thoughtful, so affectionate, 
so courteous does not mention his brother-apostle, 
the Pastor of the Church, the Head and Teacher 
of the Church Universal, the Vicar of Christ and 
Vicegerent of Almighty God. There is one very 
easy answer — and there can be no other — Peter 
was not the Vicar of Christ. He was not the 
Bishop of Rome. He was not even in Rome. 
Peter's Roman episcopate rests on the most 
shadowy evidence possible ; and yet we must be- 
lieve it or be everlastingly damned. 



24 What Protestants Believe 

But there is one more foot to the Roman tripod. 
Even if the first and second were solid and good, 
the whole structure of the Papacy must fall with- 
out the third ; for no tripod can stand on two feet. 
The third foot is this : Peter, the first pope, the 
infallible Teacher and absolute Autocrat of the 
Universal Church, was authorized to transmit all 
his authority and power to each of his successors, 
the bishops of Rome, so that every bishop Rome 
has ever had, no matter what his character was, 
was all that, they say, Peter became when Jesus 
said: "Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I 
build my church." For the sake of the argument 
we will admit that Peter was the Head of the 
Church and the first Bishop of Rome. But what 
proof is there that every subsequent bishop of 
that church, no matter what his character or how 
his election was brought about, was, by virtue of 
his office, the supreme pastor of all Christians and 
the infallible spokesman of the Holy Ghost? 
There is absolutely no proof. It is the most base- 
less of assumptions. There is not a syllable of 
Scripture that can be tortured into its support; it 
was not thought of during the first five hundred 
years of the Christian era; it was utterly repu-* 



What Protestants Believe 25 

diated by the Church generally, when first sug- 
gested; and it involves absurdities the most glar- 
ing and monstrous. Would the Almighty bind 
himself in advance to commit all the authority he 
possesses over the Church into the hands of any 
man who might happen to be selected for that pur- 
pose by the electorate of a rotten municipality 
or by a secret cabal of licentious and drunken 
priests or by a tyrannical and unprincipled em- 
peror ? Such are the methods by which many of 
the Roman Pontiffs have been chosen. For long 
centuries no man could become Pope of Rome 
without the consent of the King of France and 
the Emperor of Austria. Can you believe that 
Almighty God would leave the appointment of 
one who should be his sole representative and the 
infallible expounder of his truth to men more 
vile, in some cases, than the worst criminal or 
the keeper of the lowest house of ill-fame ? You 
have got to believe that, if you accept the Roman 
Catholic doctrine about the pope. 

There is no end to the absurdities which you 
must accept if you believe the papal doctrine that 
every Bishop of Rome is the divinely-appointed 
Head of the Church. In the fourteenth century 



26 What Protestants Believe 

the cardinals elected Urban to the pontificate. 
This election, as they afterward affirmed, was in- 
valid, because they acted under the compulsion of 
a mob. So they retired to Fundi and elected an- 
other, Clement So Christendom had two infalli- 
ble Vicars of Christ ; and nobody could tell which 
was the real one. Each had his successor. The 
schism was kept up for a long time, till the Coun- 
cil of Pisa assumed to depose the two and elected 
a third, Alexander. Another council was called 
at Constance, which deposed the three and elected 
a fourth. So the Holy Catholic Church had four 
heads, each cursing and damning and consigning 
to hell the other three. It was exceedingly diffi- 
cult, if not impossible, for an intelligent and con- 
scientious Catholic to determine which one was 
the representative of God and which three were 
the tools of the Devil; and yet his eternal salva- 
tion depended upon his decision. There is no sal- 
vation for any human soul, unless he be in com- 
munion with Christ's true Vicar and representa- 
tive ; and what is a poor sinner going to do when 
he cannot tell which of four men is the true Vicar 
and sole Head of the only true Church ? Half a 
century was spent in the settlement of these dis- 



What Protestants Believe 27 

putes. How many millions of souls went to hell 
in the meantime, because they could not tell who 
was the real pope, nobody can tell. But the num- 
ber must have been very great. 

The utmost corruption and violence have at- 
tended the election of popes, and some of the 
vilest of men have been made the vicars of Christ 
and the vicegerents of the Almighty. I am not 
slandering the Roman Catholic Church. I am 
only repeating what all Roman Catholic his- 
torians record. In 893 Formosus secured the 
popedom by bribery and the help of the King of 
the Goths. His successor, infallible like himself, 
had his body dug up and tried and condemned by 
a council and flung into the River Tiber. A Ro- 
man Catholic historian, Genebrand by name, says : 
"For almost one hundred years about fifty popes, 
having departed from virtue, were apostate rather 
than apostolic; at which time they entered in not 
by the door, but by a back door, that is to say, by 
the power of the emperor s." Baronius, a Papal 
writer, says : "Hast thou heard of the most de- 
plorable state of things at this time, when Theo- 
dora, a strumpet of noble family, obtained su- 
preme control in the City of Rome? She prosti- 



28 What Protestants Believe 

tuted her daughters to the popes, by which means 
the dominion of such wicked women became so 
absolute that they removed at pleasure the law- 
fully created popes and, having expelled them, 
introduced violent and most wicked men in their 
places." Some of the vilest and most beastly and 
devilish men who ever lived have occupied the 
Papal chair; and yet everyone of them was the 
infallible teacher of divine truth, without whose 
mediation no one could enter the kingdom of God. 
That is a necessary part of the doctrine of the 
papacy which I feel it my duty to combat. Peter 
was the infallible Head of the Church ; and every 
Pope of Rome has all the power and authority 
of Peter and of Christ simply because he is the 
Bishop of Rome. Believe that, or be damned. 

I know well the Romish answer to this argu- 
ment. They tell us that the office is one thing 
and the officer another ; that there have been bad 
men in the ministry of the Protestant Churches ; 
that one of the Twelve Apostles was corrupt. 
That is well spoken. But Judas was not pope; 
no Protestant minister professes to be anything 
more than a fallible expounder of the Word ; and 
an office endowed with such supreme and excep- 



What Protestants Believe 29 

tional prerogatives as the Papacy claims for it- 
self ought to be divinely protected (as it certainly 
is not) against the accidents of human ignorance 
and selfishness and lust. If Christ wanted a vicar 
on earth, clothed with all the authority which he 
himself possesses, would he not be likely to se- 
lect his own man, whenever there is a vacancy 
in the office, as he is said to have done in the case 
Of Peter ? 

There are many other absurdities which you 
must believe, if you accept the doctrine of the 
Papacy. Would an infallible teacher of divine 
truth lay down as a doctrine, which you must 
believe in order to be saved, that the earth is flat 
and that the sun revolves around it every twenty- 
four hours ? One of the popes did that very thing, 
and pronounced Galileo, the inventor of the clock, 
the microscope, the thermometer and the tele- 
scope a heretic because he declared that the earth 
moves. Would an infallible teacher of morals 
declare that to rob a heretic of everything is an 
innocent act ? A pope did that. Would the Vicar 
of Christ sanction that horrible massacre of St. 
Bartholomew, in which a hundred thousand in- 
nocent men and women were murdered with the 



30 What Protestants Believe 

greatest treachery and cruelty simply because 
they were Protestants, and go to church and 
thank God for it and have a gold medal made to 
commemorate the hellish butchery ? Eminent Ro- 
man Catholic writers admit that one of the popes 
did that, and all the world knows it. Would an 
infallible successor of the meek and lowly Jesus 
order whole nations of honest and law-abiding 
men and women to be butchered in the most bar- 
brous fashion just because they would not kiss 
his toe? A Roman Catholic priest, in good and 
regular standing, says very many of the popes 
did that, in a book which I have just been read- 
ing. Have you read of that hell on earth called 
"The Holy Inquisition/' set up in hundreds of 
cities in Europe to inflict the most horrible tor- 
tures that human and satanic cunning could in- 
vent on the very best of the people for no crime 
but claiming the right to think for themselves? 
Would you suppose that the Vicar of Christ would 
sanction such unspeakable an abomination as 
that ? Every student of history knows that a pope 
founded the Inquisition and many of his succes- 
sors kept it going and made it much worse than 
they found it. So says the Roman Catholic priest 



What Protestants Believe 31 

to whom I just alluded. I am not talking against 
the good people who worship God according to 
the forms of the Roman Catholic Church ; I have 
no quarrel with them. I am showing you why I 
cannot accept the doctrine of Papal Infallibility. 
It will be said that Protestants have persecuted 
Roman Catholics. That is true. But the persecu- 
tions which Protestants have inflicted have been 
comparatively few and mild; and we have no 
Protestant pope to tell us that we must believe 
that it is right to murder all heretics, or we de- 
serve to go to hell ourselves. A succession of 
infallible popes have declared that all heretics 
(which includes Protestants) ought to be put to 
death, and that the reason why they are permitted 
to live is because the Vicar of Christ has not the 
power to do what he has the right to perform. 
I do not repeat this familiar truth to make you 
dislike your Roman Catholic neighbors, but to 
make you see that the doctrine of the Papacy is 
not true. A church officer who would condemn 
the members of all other Christian denominations 
to death cannot be the head of the true Church 
of Jesus Christ. 



32 What Protestants Believe 

The Papacy is not a divine institution. It was 
born of human greed and love of power. It was 
unknown to the early Church. It has always been 
repudiated by the Greek Church, which is older 
than the Roman and now numbers ninety million 
members. It has grown to its present propor- 
tions from a little seed of priestly ambition. The 
Papacy is based upon a stupendous lie. It has 
been an awful incubus upon humanity. It has 
been, and is, the inveterate enemy of religious 
and civil liberty. It has always withstood the 
progress of science and civilization. Every step 
of advancement which the world has made has 
been against its most determined and virulent op- 
position. 

My subject seems to be endless. I have only 
begun its discussion. "The Lord is gracious, to 
whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed 
indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, 
ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual 
house, an holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sac- 
rifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ/' The 
living stone, on which God's "spiritual house," 
the Church, is built, is not Peter but Christ. He 
is the only Head of the Church. His teachings, 



What Protestants Believe 33 

from his own lips and from the pens of his in- 
spired apostles, are our only standard of doctrine. 
Every honest student of the New Testament can 
find the truth, and the truth will make him free. 
We have no need of a priest or minister but to 
help us to understand what Jesus has spoken. 
The priest has no authority over our faith. Best 
of all, the Holy Spirit will take of the things of 
Christ and show them unto us. These are Christ's 
own words, 



34 What Protestants Believe 



Priests generally discountenance the reading of 
Scriptures by the laity. They quote II Peter 3:16, 
"some things hard to be understood, which they 
that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they 
do also the other scriptures, unto their own de- 
struction/' But Christ says John 5 :39 : "Search 
the scriptures ; for in them ye think ye have eter- 
nal life : and they are they which testify of me." 
St Peter says (I Peter 2:2) "As newborn babes 
desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may 
grow thereby," "But grow in grace, and in the 
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ," II Peter 3:18, or Rev. 2:17, "He that 
hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith 
unto the churches ; To him that overcometh will / 
give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give 
him a white stone, and in the stone, a new name 
written, which no man knoweth saving he that re- 
ceiveth it." 

Samuel McGerald, D. D. 



GOD IS THE ONLY PROPER OBJECT OF 

WORSHIP 

********* Thou shalt worship the Lord 
thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." 
Matthew iv:io. 

These are the words of Jesus to the Devil. In 
the wilderness Satan made three assaults upon 
Christ. In the second he took him up to the sum- 
mit of a lofty "mountain and showed him all the 
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them." 
When the Saviour had taken in all the wonderful 
panorama, the tempter said : "I will give you all 
this, if you will fall down and worship me." 
Jesus' instant answer was : "Get thee hence, Sa- 
tan ; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord 
thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." In re- 
peating that Old Testament command, the Great 
Teacher reaffirmed one of the great fundamental 
laws of the kingdom of God. It is universally 
and everlastingly true that God is the only proper 
object of worship. To worship any other person 
or being, or anything which exists or is imagined 

35 



36 What Protestants Believe 

to exist, or to do anything which leads to, or ap- 
proaches, such worship, is a monstrous and dam- 
ning crime. Under all human governments high 
treason is the greatest of crimes. To worship 
anything but God is high treason against the gov- 
ernment of the universe. 

This is the crime which is denounced in the 
first and second commandments of the Decalogue. 
Hear what God himself said to Israel, in an au- 
dible voice, amid the thunders and lightnings of 
Sinai: "Thou shalt have no other gods before 
me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven 
image, or any likeness of anything that is in 
Heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or 
that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt 
not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them; 
for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visit- 
ing the iniquity of the fathers upon the children 
unto the third and fourth generation of them that 
hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of 
them that love me, and keep my commandments/' 
Idolatry, the worship of anything but the one true 
God who created all things, is the great root sin 
of the ages, from which nearly all other sins have 
sprung. Idolatry is the cause of the largest por- 



What Protestants Believe 37 

tion of all the crimes and miseries under which 
the human family has groaned for six thousand 
years. Nine hundred millions of men are in dark- 
ness and degradation and barbarism, or semi- 
barbarism — why? Chiefly because they worship 
other gods beside the one God who made the 
world. No nation can rise into the light and lib- 
erty of true civilization till it learns to worship 
one God, and nobody and nothing else. The four 
hundred and fifty millions of China are idolaters ; 
they worship their ancestors and a great variety 
of other objects of thought and imagination. The 
three hundred and fifteen millions of India are 
mostly idolaters ; they worship five million differ- 
ent gods. They worship monkeys and snakes and 
crocodiles and the most hideous-looking images of 
gold and brass and stone and wood. The one 
hundred and thirty millions of darkest Africa are 
idolaters. They have carried idolatry to its low- 
est depths. They worship the Devil himself and 
other things too vile to be named. To his Church 
Christ has committed the work of expelling idola- 
try from the world. She ought to be very care- 
ful to keep her own hands entirely free from the, 
pollution of that sin. 



38 What Protestants Believe 

At the beginning the whole human family knew 
and worshiped the true God. Very soon the ma- 
jority began to turn their backs on Him. Being 
so constituted that they had to worship some- 
thing, they looked around to find a substitute for 
the God who made them and justly claimed their 
supreme adoration and love. If I mistake not, the 
first thing they worshiped was the sun. That 
seemed more like its Maker than anything else. 
Then, when the sun was out of sight, they gave 
their offerings and said their prayers to the moon. 
They called the sun the King of Heaven; and 
the moon, the Queen. Next the stars became ob- 
jects of adoration, and were called the Princes 
of Heaven, the sons and daughters of the sun 
and moon. Then it seemed to men that the winds 
were persons, and the rivers and the mountains 
and the seasons and all the powers of nature; 
and they worshiped them. At every step they 
were getting farther and farther away from the 
Only One who deserves to be worshiped. Next 
some great man, some powerful ruler and bene- 
factor, died. They imagined that he had gone to 
Heaven and become a god, and they worshiped 
him. In process of the generations and the cen- 



What Protestants Believe 39 

turies the deified heroes multiplied, till there was 
a whole senate of Celestials, like Jupiter and Mars 
and Apollo and Vulcan and Neptune and all the 
rest. Meanwhile the people clamored for some- 
thing to worship which they could see and have 
before their eyes all the time. So certain animals 
were chosen to represent the different powers and 
attributes of the celestial beings — the lion for 
courage ; the ox for patient strength ; the serpent 
for wisdom ; the eagle for swiftness ; the peacock, 
with its many eye-spots on its plumage, for om- 
niscience. And images were made to stand for 
the different gods which human imagination had 
created. At first the people worshiped the un- 
seen powers and persons whom the beasts and 
birds and reptiles and images represented. But, 
after a time, they forgot the unseen and wor- 
shiped the animals and images themselves. Idola- 
try spread wider and wider and grew blacker and 
blacker, till no one in all the world knew the 
true God but Abraham and his little circle of 
friends and, possibly, a few other families, scat- 
tered here and there among the nations. 

About thirty-eight hundred years ago God 
started a new movement to cure the world of 



40 What Protestants Believe 

idolatry. He sent Abraham into the land of Pal- 
estine to found a new nation. After the lapse of 
four hundred years the new nation was born. 
The foundation of that nation was the doctrine 
that there is only one God in all the universe and 
that no kind of worship whatever should be paid 
to any other being or any other object of thought 
or imagination. God was so strict with the Chil- 
dren of Israel that he would not allow them to 
have statues or pictures of any kind, lest they 
should be tempted to worship them. "Thou shalt 
not make unto thee any graven image, or any 
likeness of anything that is in Heaven above, or 
that is in the earth beneath. Thou shalt not bow 
down thyself to them nor serve them." The 
golden cherubs over the ark, in the most holy 
place of the Tabernacle, was absolutely the only 
image or pictorial representation which was al- 
lowed to exist in all Israel ; and nobody ever saw 
that but the high priest, and he only once a year. 
For eight hundred and fifty years the only bright 
spot, in the midst of the darkness of idolatry 
which covered the earth, was the land of Israel, 
a country not as large as our State of Vermont. 
God had hard work to keep his people clean. 



What Protestants Believe 41 

Again and again they turned from Him to the 
idols of the heathen. Again and again he whipped 
them back into the path of obedience. At last he 
rooted them out of their own land and sent them 
into captivity in Babylon for seventy years. 
When they came back to Judea and Jerusalem, 
they were entirely cured of idolatry, and have re- 
mained so till today. 

In founding his Church, Christ reaffirmed the 
First of the old Ten Commandments in these 
words: "Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is 
one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with 
all thy mind and with all thy strength." The 
early Christians worshiped nothing but the one 
triune God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. You 
cannot find in all the New Testament the slightest 
trace of any kind of worship, or adoration, or 
veneration, or homage, or service paid to any 
angel, or saint, or man, or woman, or relic, or 
statue, or bust, or picture, or sacred place, or any- 
thing whatsoever except Almighty God. The 
Twelve Apostles and all the first Christians were 
Jews, and the Jews had the most utter loathing 
and abhorence for everything that looked or smelt 



42 What Protestants Believe 

like idolatry. If! you search the Gospels and 
Epistles with a microscope, you will not find any 
indication that any Christian ever prayed to, or 
knelt before, or kissed, or venerated any image 
or picture, or asked any angel or saint to act as a 
go-between for him with the Almighty. 

But, after several centuries had passed, the 
Church became corrupt and conformed herself to 
the notions of the pagan world. She adopted all 
the gods of Greece and Rome, and gave them the 
names of dead saints, and put them all around 
the throne of God, and told the people that they 
must reach God through the saints. At the same 
time she filled her places of worship with images 
and pictures and told the people to say their 
prayers before them. And she hunted up a great 
quantity of real, or pretended relics of the saints 
and apostles and Christ — rags and skulls and nails 
and pieces of wood — and told the ignorant people 
that they possessed saving virtue for body and 
soul. And so, when Luther began to preach salva- 
tion by faith, the Christianity of the world was 
hardly anything but baptized paganism ; and the 
work of curing the world of Idolatry had to be 
begun over again. Mohammedanism was a re- 



What Protestants Believe 43 

coil from the idolatry which had covered the so- 
called Christian world and hidden the true Christ 
from the eyes of the people Mohammedanism has 
been, and is, a great curse. But Mohammedanism 
would never have been if the Church had not put 
the worship of angels and saints and relics and 
images and pictures in the place of the true wor- 
ship of God. 

This idolatry was not the idolatry of China or 
India or Africa, but the idolatry of the Roman 
Catholic Church. I have no ill feeling toward 
any of my Roman Catholic neighbors. I want 
to be considered their friend, as I am. But it is 
my duty to show that they have, unconsciously 
and honestly, as I trust, been led into the violation 
of the First and Second Commandments. 

First, the Roman Catholic Church worships 
angels. There is a little book of devotion, called 
"The Ursuline Manual/' endorsed by the highest 
authorities in the Church of Rome, which con- 
tains this prayer: "O blessed angel! to whose 
holy care I am committed by the supreme clem- 
ency, illuminate, defend and govern me this day ; 
preserve me particularly from sin, and watch over 
me at the awful moment of death." The priests 



44 What Protestants Believe 

of Rome will tell us that this is not idolatrous 
worship; that it is a different worship from that 
which is accorded to the Almighty. But I am 
too stupid to see the difference. It is not a prayer 
to the angel to intercede with God for the one 
who prays. It is a request to a created being to 
give what only Almighty power can bestow — 
''illuminate, defend and govern me this day and 
preserve me particularly from sin." If that is 
not worshiping an angel, then nobody could wor- 
ship an angel. And yet, St. John, when he fell 
down to worship the angel who had been show- 
ing him about through the celestial regions, while 
he was on the isle of Patmos, was rebuked by his 
guide, who said : "See thou do it not ; for I am 
thy fellow servant. Worship God." The angels 
are our fellow servants. It is a sin to worship, 
or pray to, them. We should worship their God 
and ours, and no one else. 

In the second place our Roman Catholic friends 
worship the departed saints. I know that they 
say — the more thoughtful ones — that they do not 
worship the saints in the same way they do God ; 
that all they intend, is to ask the saints to use 
their influence with God to give them the bless- 



What Protestants Believe 45 

ings which they need. That is too nice a distinc- 
tion for ordinary mortals to understand. I be- 
lieve that the great mass of these who pray to St. 
Michael and St. Bridget and St. Nicholas and 
St. Patrick, and all the other saints real and 
imaginary, actually worship the saint and get no 
farther with their thought and their faith. Pray- 
ing to a creature, whether you expect him to help 
and bless you himself or to go to God in your be- 
half, is dangerous business. We do not need the 
saints to go to God for us. We can go direct to 
God ourselves, through Jesus Christ, our only 
Mediator and Saviour. You cannot find any hint 
of praying to the saints in the Bible. Why did 
not Jesus and the apostles teach us to pray to the 
saints? The only prayer offered to a saint, of 
which we have any account in Scripture, was 
made in hell. Dives prayed to Abraham ; but he 
prayed in vain. Jesus said: "Whatsoever ye 
shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the 
Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall 
ask anything in my name, I will do it." "In my 
name" in the name of Jesus, not in the name of 
any angel or saint or the Virgin Mary. 



46 What Protestants Believe 

I know what our Roman Catholic friends say 
to this. They say : "You ask your pious friends 
on earth to pray to God for you. Why not ask 
your pious friends in heaven to pray to God for 
you?" There is a great difference between ask- 
ing a Christian friend on earth to join his prayers 
to God with yours and praying to a dead saint to 
intercede for you. If you begin by praying to a 
saint in glory to go to God for you, you will end by 
praying to that saint and forgetting all about God. 
You will make a god of the saint. That is what 
the saints of the Roman calendar are. They are 
little gods, surrounding the throne of the Infinite 
and hiding Him from the thoughts and faith of 
the worshipers. At all events, God commands 
us to pray directly to him in the name of his Son 
Jesus Christ. He has never commanded us to 
pray to the saints or in the name of the saints. 

Praying to the saints is not only contrary to the 
Scriptures, but it is contrary to reason. That any 
saint can hear the invocation, and attend to the 
requests of millions of worshipers at the same 
time, no sane person can believe. There are mil- 
lions of Irishmen in Ireland and in America and 
all over the world, praying at the same time to 



What Protestants Believe 47 

St. Patrick and St. Bridget. It is impossible that 
those saints could hear and answer all those 
prayers. If they can, they are omnipresent and 
omniscient. If they can, they are gods. As was 
said a moment ago, to invoke the saints is to put 
many other gods on the throne with the Almighty. 
In the third place, the Roman Catholic Church 
worships images and pictures. The walls of their 
places of worship are hung with statues and 
paintings before which the faithful kneel and say 
their prayers. The more thoughtful ones say that 
they do not worship the image or the picture but 
the Saviour or saint whom it represents. That 
is exactly what the educated Hindu says when 
you reprove him for saying his prayers to a 
monkey or a crocodile. He does not worship the 
beast or the reptile, but the divine being whom 
they represent. That may be true in some cases. 
But the adoration and faith of most idolaters 
never get any farther than the object before 
which they bend the knee. God knew that it was 
not safe for the average worshiper to say his 
prayers to an image or a picture. For he says, in 
the sacred Second Commandment, 'Thou shalt 
not make unto thee any graven image or any 



48 What Protestants Believe 

likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or 
that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water 
under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself 
to them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God 
am a jealous God," God is so jealous of the love 
and worship of his children that he will not 
tolerate anything that looks like the worship of 
the creature, or tends in that direction. The 
Roman Catholic Church does exactly what God 
forbids. Most Roman Catholics do not know 
that any such command has been given. In their 
list of the Ten Commandments the second is 
usually left out ; and the number Ten is preserved 
by dividing the last into two. As long as our 
Roman Catholic friends bow down before images 
and pictures of Christ and the angels and saints 
and say their prayers, they cannot deny that they 
violate the Second Commandment and do what 
Christ forbids in our text : "Thou shalt worship 
the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve/ 9 
In the fourth place the Roman Church worships 
relics. They say that they do not worship, but 
only venerate, them. But that is a distinction 
without any real difference. I will give you the 
facts and you may judge for yourself. According 



What Protestants Believe 49 

to a recent writer, an American Roman Catholic 
priest in good standing, who loves his Church but 
wants to see it reformed, there are in various 
Roman Catholic churches and sacred places the 
following relics, among many others, "a wrist- 
bone of St. Ann, the rod of Moses, the window 
through which the Angel Gabriel entered the 
house of Mary, twenty-five bodies of John the 
Baptist, six heads of St. Ignatius, sixty fingers 
of St. Jerome, forty holy shrouds in which the 
body of Christ was wrapped and seven hundred 
thorns from the Saviour's crown." Then there is a 
handkerchief which an imaginary Saint Veronica 
loaned to Jesus, on the way to the cross, to wipe 
the sweat from his brow. When he handed it 
back to the good woman, it had his portrait, which 
it bears today. At Naples is a bottle of the blood 
of St. Januarius, shed fifteen hundred years ago, 
which liquefies in the hands of a priest on the 
19th day of every September. There are many 
cords of wood from the cross on which the Re- 
deemer died ; and tons of spikes which were 
driven through his hands and feet. A complete 
catalogue of the sacred relics which have been 
gathered would fill a large book. The Roman 



50 What Protestants Believe 

Church teaches that there is real virtue in all this 
rubbish. The Council of Trent, than which there 
is no higher authority says, 'The holy bodies of 
holy martyrs, which bodies were the living mem- 
bers of Christ, and the temples of the Holy Ghost, 
are to be venerated by the faithful, through which 
(bodies) many benefits are bestowed by God on 
men." What do the faithful do with those relics ? 
They fall before them, and kiss them, and pray 
and expect healing to come through them to their 
bodies and their souls. The naked savage in 
Africa prays to his fetish — a stone, or a feather, 
or a piece of wood — believing that a spirit, mighty 
to save and protect, dwells within. The credulous 
Romanist kneels before a glass case containing 
the finger-bone of a supposed saint who died a 
thousand years ago, and prays, and expects his 
diseases to be cured or his sins to be forgiven 
through the virtue which God has lodged in the 
venerated relic. What is the difference between 
the two cases? If you call that heathen an idol- 
ater, how can you help calling the Christian an 
idolater too? 

Again, the Romanists seem to worship living 
men. What is it but worship when they fall 



What Protestants Believe 51 

prostrate before the Pope and call him "Most 
Holy Father/' "God on Earth" and "The Lord 
God?" Does not the penitent in the confessional 
worship the priest when, on his knees, he bows 
his head, smites his breast and says: "I 
confess to Almighty God, to the blessed Virgin 
Mary, to the blessed Michael the Archangel, to 
the blessed St. John the Baptist, to the holy 
apostles Peter and Paul, to all the saints in 
heaven, and to you, my father, that I have sinned 
exceedingly, in thought, word and deed, through 
my fault, through my fault, through my most 
grevious fault." After a brief pause, he says: 
"For these and all the sins of my life I humbly 
beg pardon of God, and penace and absolution 
of you, my father/' If that is not worshiping 
men, it comes perilously near it. 

Finally the Roman Catholic Church worships 
the Virgin Mary. The Roman theologians say 
that Mary died ; but that she arose from the dead 
a few days after her burial and ascended to 
heaven, Christ and the angels and heavenly hosts 
coming to meet her. They call that the assump- 
tion. They have exalted her almost to an equality 
with the Most high God. Hear some of the titles 



52 What Protestants Believe 

they have given this mere woman: "Queen of 
Mercy," "Queen of Heaven/' "Queen of the 
Universe," "Mother of God," "The Mother^ of 
Life," "Wife of the Holy Ghost," "The Advo- 
cate," "The Treasurer of All Divine Grace," "The 
Omnipotent." What blasphemy! If Mary is the 
Queen of Heaven, she must be divine. God is 
the King of Heaven. If Mary is the Queen, she 
must be far more than human. "Mother of God !" 
That is horrible. Mary was the mother of Christ's 
humanity; she was not the mother of God. It is 
almost blasphemous to repeat such language. 

I have a book of over eight hundred pages, 
purchased in a Roman Catholic bookstore, en- 
titled "The Glories of Mary," written by a priest 
named Ligouri, translated from the Italian. It 
bears the endorsement of the Archbishop of New 
York. One edition which I have seen bears the 
imprimatur of the Pope himself. All it contains 
is good Roman Catholic doctrine. It is the teach- 
ing of the infallible Head of the Church. I will 
read from the book, that you may hear what you 
must believe about the Virgin Mary, or lose your 
soul. "God has ordained that all graces should 
come to us through the hands of Mary." "All 



What Protestants Believe 53 

graces are dispensed by the hand of Mary alone, 
and all those who are saved, are saved solely by 
means of this divine mother." "Mary so loved the 
world that she gave her only-begotten-son, that 
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life." "Listen all ye who desire 
the kingdom of God ; honor the Virgin Mary, and 
ye shall have life and eternal salvation." "All the 
mercy and pardon which sinners received under 
the Old Law was granted them by God solely for 
the sake of this blessed Virgin." "Blessed is the 
man, says Mary, that heareth me, and that 
watcheth daily at my gates, and waiteth at the 
posts of my doors." "The Church requires all the 
clergy and all religious persons to raise their 
voices, and in the name of all the faithful, invoke 
and call Mary by the sweet name of hope, the 
hope of all : 'Hail, our hope P " "Under the 
mantle of Mary all offenders may find protection, 
whatever crimes they have committed." "Fly, O 
Adam, O Eve, and ye, their children, who have 
offended God; fly and take refuge in the bosom 
of this good mother. Do you not know that she 
is the only city of refuge and the only hope of sin- 
ners ?" "She is the only Advocate of sinners, and 



54 What Protestants Believe 

of those who are deprived of every help. 
'Hail, Refuge and retreat of sinners, to whom 
alone they can flee with confidence/ And this is 
what David intended to express when he said, 
'In the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me/ 
And what is this tabernacle, if not Mary ? " When 
we have recourse to this divine mother, we may 
not only be sure of her protection, but that some- 
times we shall sooner be heard and saved by in - 
voking her holy name than that of Jesus our 
Saviour, because it belongs to Christ to punish, but 
to Mary, as our Advocate to pity. We sooner find 
salvation by recurring to the mother than to the 
Son." "The pillar of cloud and fire which guided 
the people of the Lord out of Egypt was a type of 
Mary and her double office, which she exercises 
continually in our behalf ; as a cloud she protects 
us from the heat of divine justice, and as a fire 
she protects us from demons." "We acknowledge 
that Jesus Christ is the only mediator of justice, 
who by his merits obtains for us grace and salva- 
tion ; but we affirm that Mary is the mediator of 
grace, and although whatever she obtains, she 
obtains through the merits of Jesus Christ, and 
because she prays and asks for it in the name of 



What Protestants Believe 55 

Jesus Christ, yet whatever favors we ask are all 
obtained through her intercession." "Mary is 
called the Gate of Heaven, because no one can 
enter Heaven, if he does not pass through Mary, 
who is the door." "God has chosen to bestow 
no grace upon us but by the hands of Mary." 
"The salvation of all men is dependent upon the 
good pleasure of Mary." "Jesus is never found 
but with and through Mary. He seeks Jesus in 
vain who does not look for him with Mary. He 
can never be a servant of the Son who is not the 
servant of the mother." "All obey the commands 
of Mary, even God himself." "As the mother 
must have the same power as the Son, justly was 
Mary made omnipotent by Jesus, who is omnipo- 
tent." "Take heart, O miserable sinners, this 
great Virgin, who is the mother of your judge, is 
the advocate of the human race." "Mary becomes 
all things to all men, and opens to all the bowels 
of her mercy, that all may receive of her ; the 
captive his freedom; the sick man health; the 
afflicted consolation ; the sinner pardon ; and God 
glory. Hence there is no one, since she is the 
sun, who does not partake of her warmth." "The 
gate of heaven will be opened to receive all those 



56 What Protestants Believe 

who trust in the protection of Mary/' "God has 
made Mary a bridge of salvation, by which we are 
enabled to pass over the waves of this world, and 
reach the blessed port of paradise. Serve and 
honor Mary, and you will certainly find life 
eternal." "Mary having been made the mother of 
all the redeemed, by the merit of her sufferings, 
and the offering of her Son, it is just to believe 
that only by her hand may be given them the milk 
of those divine graces which are the fruits of the 
merits of Jesus Christ and the means to obtain 
eternal life." "Whoever wishes to find Jesus, will 
not find him except through Mary." 

The book abounds in prayers to the Virgin 
Mary. I will give you portions of a few: — "O 
Mother of my God and my Lady Mary, as a poor 
wounded and loathsome wretch presents himself 
to a great queen, I present myself to thee, who 
art the queen of heaven and earth. From the 
lofty throne on which thou art seated, do not dis- 
dain, I pray thee, to cast thy eye upon me, a poor 
sinner. Look upon me, and do not leave me until 
thou has changed me from a sinner to a saint. 
Thine I am, save me! Accept me, O Mary, for 
thy own and attend to my salvation, as I am thine 



What Protestants Believe 57 

own." What more could one say in praying to 
God himself. And yet they say they do not wor- 
ship Mary; they only adore her and invoke her. 
If that is not worship, such as belongs to God 
alone, then I am too ignorant to know what wor- 
ship is. Can you endure some more of this blas- 
phemy?" "Behold, O mother of my God, Mary, 
my only hope, behold at thy feet a miserable sin- 
ner, who implores thy mercy. Thou art pro- 
claimed and called by the whole Church, and by 
all the faithful, the refuge of sinners; thou art 
my refuge ; it is thine to save me. I place myself 
in thy hands. I take refuge beneath thy mantle/* 
One more: "O holy mother, thou hast already 
left the earth; do not forget us, miserable pil- 
grims, who remain in this valley of tears strug- 
gling against so many enemies, who desire to see 
us lost in hell. By the merits of thy precious 
death, obtain for us detachment from earthly 
things, pardon of our sins, love to God, and holy 
perseverance; and, when the hour of death shall 
arrive, assist us from heaven with thy prayers, 
and obtain for us to come and kiss thy feet in 
paradise." 



58 What Protestants Believe 

To cap the climax of absurdity and blasphemy, 
I will make one more quotation from the book of 
Ligouri, which is the Pope's own book: "If there 
were two ladders reaching from earth to heaven, 
one a red ladder, with Jesus standing at the top, 
and the other a white ladder, with Mary stand- 
ing at the top; and the poor sinner should try to 
climb up Jesus' ladder, he would fall back into 
hell, but if he should climb up Mary's ladder, he 
would be saved/' 

How can our Roman Catholic neighbors clear 
themselves from the charge of idolatry ? I grant 
you that they are sincere. So, doubtless, are the 
millions who worship other gods than the true 
God in India and Africa and the isles of the sea. 
They have been misled; they are in grevious er- 
ror. We must show them the true way of salva- 
tion. I know their priests say that they do not in- 
voke Mary in place of Christ, but that she may in- 
tercede with her Son for our salvation. Right 
there is the core and heart of their error and sin. 
They represent God the Father and God the Son 
as being hard-hearted beings who are disposed to 
refuse our prayers and hurl us all into hell. 
Therefore we need the intercession of the angels 



What Protestants Believe 59 

and saints to move them to save us. Especially 
we need the intervention of Mary to tease her 
iron-hearted Son to pity us and grant us the 
benefits of his sufferings and death. That is a 
gross and wicked slander. The Bible does not 
give us any such view of Christ as that. We 
need no intercessor between him and us. St. John 
says: "If any man sin, we have an Advocate 
with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." St. 
Paul says : "There is one God, and one mediator 
between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." 
Rome gives the lie to John and Paul and God, 
squarely and positively, by declaring that Mary 
is our Intercessor and Advocate. Every sinner 
can, and must, go directly to Christ, without the 
intervention of any angel, or saint, or priest, or 
minister. Christ's love and pity are infinitely 
greater than his mother's or those of any saint 
or all the saints. 

Mariolatry is blasphemous, unscriptural and 
absurd. It is blasphemous. It puts a mere woman 
in the place of God. It gives her the titles and 
attributes which it is an awful sin to give to any 
being but the Creator of the universe. Mary was 
a holy woman. Her memory is to be honored. 



60 What Protestants Believe 

And yet she was a sinner, saved by grace. Rome, 
without any warrant from Scripture or reason, 
says that she was born without a sinful nature. 
The doctrine of "The Immaculate Conception," 
as they call it, is a human invention. Mariolatry 
is unscriptural. There is not one solitary word 
in the Bible to back it up. But little mention is 
made of the Mother of Jesus in the gospels. Her 
son reproved her at Cana for interfering with his 
affairs. When she and his brothers (the Ro- 
manists say that Mary had no child but Jesus) 
stood at the door of a crowded house where Jesus 
was teaching, desiring to speak with him, he did 
not stop his preaching to go to her, but merely 
said: "Who is my mother? and who are my 
brothers? Whosoever shall do the will of my 
Father which is in Heaven, the same is my brother 
and sister and mother." That shows how much 
influence Mary would have as an intercessor with 
Christ. If we needed any such advocate, any 
other holy woman or man would answer just as 
well as Mary. Jesus did not appear to his mother 
after the resurrection, so far as the record shows. 
Very likely she was one of the "above five hun- 
dred" who saw him at the same time ; but he did 



What Protestants Believe 61 

not appear to her especially. It is an interesting 
fact that Mary drops out of the record entirely. 
She is never mentioned after the first chapter of 
Acts. If, as Ligouri and the pope declare, "God 
made Mary a bridge of salvation, by which we 
are enabled to pass over the waves of this world 
and reach the blessed port of paradise/' do you 
not think Peter and Paul and James and the others 
would have said something about her in their ser- 
mons and letters? Mariolatry was utterly un- 
known to the primitive church. It came into 
Christianity from paganism, long after the death 
of the apostles. It was mingled with Christian- 
ity to make it more palatable to the heathen. It 
came in little by little. It has grown during the 
centuries. It is growing now. More and more 
Mary is crowding out Christ and the Holy Spirit 
and God the Father himself. To a very large 
part of the membership of the Roman Church 
there is no God but Mary. Mariolatry is utterly 
absurd. Millions are praying to her, night and 
day, all over the world. She is invoked to be at 
the bedside of every dying Romanist. If she 
hears and answers all these prayers, she must be 
omniscient and omnipresent; she must be God. 



62 What Protestants Believe 

Practically that is what the adoration of Mary 
amounts to. It is turning Jehovah out of Heaven, 
and putting a deified woman in his place ; or it is 
adding a second God to the monotheism of the 
universe; or it is adding a fourth person to the 
Holy Trinity. 

Let us hold fast to the pure and simple faith 
of the New Testament and the primitive church. 
"Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him 
only shalt thou serve." When we go one step 
beyond that, we are in danger. There are scores 
of prayers in the Bible, from the lips of holy 
men and women. There is not one addressed to 
any person but God. When we pray to anyone 
but God, we are idolaters. 



GOD ALONE CAN FORGIVE SIN. 

"Why doth this man speak blasphemies ? Who 
can forgive sins but God only?" Mark \\:j. 

To the second question the only possible an- 
swer is "no one." No one would ever think of 
giving any other answer, unless he were a fool 
or a willful liar or a slave to some false and hell- 
born creed. It is well-nigh a self-evident truth 
that no one but God can forgive sin. The power 
to forgive sin belongs to God as exclusively as 
the power to create a world. What is sin? It 
is a crime committed against the Government of 
Heaven ? It is a wrong done against the person 
of God. Who but the Governor of Heaven can 
pardon a crime committed against the Govern- 
ment of Heaven ? Who but God himself can for- 
give a wrong done against the person of God? 
An anarchist tried to shoot the King of Spain a 
short time ago. Who but King Alphonso can par- 
don him and save him from death ? If a man is 
convicted of a crime against the State of New 
York, who can pardon the criminal and set him 
free? No one but the governor of the state. If 

63 



64 What Protestants Believe 

a man has been found guilty of violating the laws 
of the nation, and has been sentenced to prison 
or to death, who can restore to him his liberty 
and his citizenship? No one but the chief execu- 
tive, the President of the United States. I am 
only repeating what everybody knows. The power 
and right to forgive sin is a prerogative which 
belongs to the Almighty, and which He has never 
surrendered and never will. About that there 
would seem to be no chance for argument. 

But the Church of Rome declares that God has 
resigned that power. So far as that one preroga- 
tive of deity is concerned, the Sovereign of the 
Universe has come down from his throne and 
stripped himself and lodged His sovereignty ex- 
clusively in the hands of the ministers of that 
religious denomination. According to Romish 
doctrine, every ordained priest, no matter what 
his character and life may be, has the power to 
forgive sins; and no sinner can obtain forgive- 
ness except through and from a priest. But no 
priest can forgive sins outside the parish, or pas- 
toral charge, to which he has been appointed. 
There is one exception to this law. If a person 
is in imminent danger of death, and cannot pro- 



What Protestants Believe 65 

cure the help of his parish priest, he can ask any 
priest to forgive his sins. To you and me, there 
is no being in the universe who can forgive our 
sins but the rector of the nearest Roman Cath- 
olic Church, or his regularly-appointed assistant 
priest, if he has one. If you should go to God 
and humbly say : "O, God, my Heavenly Father, 
I have sinned against Thee. I am sorry for my 
sins ; forgive me for Jesus' sake/' he would refer 

you to Father -, or his assistant. You must 

go to him, or go to — Hell. That is good, sound 
Roman Catholic doctrine. I am not slandering 
anybody. I am telling you exactly what they all 
believe, from the pope down to the humblest lay- 
man. There are two possible exceptions. I have 
stated one. If you are dying you can call in an- 
other priest. The other exception I will state by 
and by. 

What do you think of that doctrine ? Is it rea- 
sonable ? Does it agree with your sense of what 
is proper and right? Do you find any such teach- 
ing in the Bible? Are you willing to risk your 
eternal salvation on such a proposition? Where 
do our Roman Catholic friends get their doctrine 
of forgiveness by the priest ? There are two pas- 



66 What Protestants Believe 

sages of Scripture which squint in the direction 
of priestly absolution. One is in John xx.22 
and 23, where we read: "And He/' Jesus, 
"breathed on them/' the apostles, "and said, Re- 
ceive ye the Holy Ghost ; whosesoever sins ye re- 
mit, they are remitted unto them, and whosesoever 
sins you retain, they are retained." In regard to 
that text I have this to say, if it is to be taken in its 
most literal sense, it cannot mean any more than 
that Jesus gave his Twelve Apostles the power to 
forgive sins. It does not mean that every priest 
and every minister of the gospel, no matter how 
vile and devilish he may be, has the power to for- 
give sins. It is either limited to the Twelve, or 
it is given to all Christians down to the end of 
time. To suppose that all Christians have the 
power to forgive sins would be absurd and dan- 
gerous. The most reasonable interpretation is 
that Christ gave his ministers authority to preach 
the gospel of forgiveness; to declare, with the 
power of the Holy Ghost, the terms and condi- 
tions on which a sinner may find the pardon of 
his sins. If Jesus intended to give his disciples 
power to forgive sins, why did he not make it 
plain ins his final instructions. Just before he 



What Protestants Believe 67 

ascended to Heaven he said: "Go ye and make 
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son and of the 
Holy Ghost. Go ye into all the world and preach 
the gospel to every creature." Why did he not 
plainly tell them also to forgive the sins of all 
who should repent and confess to them ? If they 
had the authority and power to forgive sins, that 
was, by far, their greatest and most important 
work, and the fact ought to have been made 
known to them, and to all mankind, in the plain- 
est and most unmistakable words. That is a 
truth, if it is a truth, of such infinite importance 
that it ought not to be left in the slightest ob- 
scurity; it ought to be made as clear as the sun 
in an unclouded sky. There is a passage in the 
first chapter of the Book of Jeremiah which sheds 
a flood of light on the subject which we are now 
examining. God said to Jeremiah : "See, I have 
set thee this day over the nations, and over the 
kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to 
destroy, and to throw down and to plant/ 5 Now 
Jeremiah never did any one of those things liter- 
ally. He was nothing but a poor, despised and 
persecuted preacher. He spent much of his time 



68 What Protestants Believe 

in prison, and died in captivity. He had no more 
power to root out and pull down nations and king- 
doms than I have. What did God mean? He 
could not have meant anything more than that 
Jeremiah should declare God's purposes and 
threatenings to root out and pull down certain 
nations. God did root out and pull down Jerusa- 
lem and Babylon and Egypt and Tyre and many 
other kingdoms and he planted Jerusalem again ; 
and he commanded Jeremiah to foretell these 
events in His name. In poetic and figurative lan- 
guage the prophet is represented as doing what 
he only foretold God would do. Christ did not 
give His apostles power to forgive sins them- 
selves; but the authority to declare, in God's 
name, the terms and conditions on which He 
would forgive. If the Romanists are correct in 
their interpretation of this Scripture, it is pass- 
ing strange that we find no traces of priestly ab- 
solution in the Book of Acts and in the epistles 
of Paul, Peter, James, John and Jude. Such a 
doctrine is too important to be passed over in 
silence. Another Scripture with which the Ro- 
manists try to bolster up their absurd doctrine of 
priestly absolution I presented in the first chapter. 



What Protestants Believe 69 

It is Christ's words to Peter and to the whole 
Church: "I have given unto thee the keys of 
the Kingdom of Heaven; and whatsoever thou 
shalt bind in earth shall be bound in Heaven, 
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall 
be loosed in Heaven. And if any two of you 
agree on earth as touching anything ye shall ask, 
it shall be done for them of my Father which is 
in Heaven." To a rational mind that means noth- 
ing more than that God has given the power to 
his Church to discipline and expel unworthy 
members and to obtain blessings from Heaven, 
in answer to united prayer. There is one other 
passage of Scripture which I must mention. It 
is in James v:i6. "Confess your faults one to 
another, and pray one for another, that ye may 
be healed." The Roman Catholics have changed 
that verse and make it read : "Confess your sins 
to the priests of the Church." All I have to say 
is that a creed which needs such medicine as that 
must be very sick and just ready to die. 

Now let us look at the other side. How does 
God's word say we are to obtain the forgiveness 
of our sins? On the very occasion when the 
words of our text were spoken, Jesus said to the 



70 What Protestants Believe 

Jews: "The Son of man hath power on earth 
to forgive sins." As everybody knows, he meant 
himself when He said "the Son of Man." Jesus 
Christ is God. As God, he has power to forgive 
sins. No one but God has that power. In the 
thirty-third verse of the eighth chapter of Ro- 
mans Paul says : "It is God that justifieth." To 
justify is to forgive. That is exactly what the 
Word means. Again Paul uses such words as 
these: "God is just and the justifier of him who 
believeth in Jesus." "It is one God who shall 
justify the circumcision by faith and the uncir- 
cumcision through faith." "Blessed is the man 
to whom God will not impute sin." Did not Paul 
know as much about the forgiveness of sins as the 
priests of Rome? Nowhere in his writings, or 
in any part of the Bible is it hinted that anyone 
but God has the power to forgive sins. Sins can- 
not be forgiven unless the sinner is truly penitent 
for his sins. Who but God, the all-wise, can 
read the sinner's heart and know that he is hon- 
estly and sincerely sorry, and determined to for- 
sake all his evil ways and thoughts? God invites 
us to go directly to Him. He says, in the Book 
of Isaiah, "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all 



What Protestants Believe 71 

the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there 
is none else/' 

What does the faithful Romanist do when he 
wants his sins forgiven? Instead of looking to 
God, he looks unto the priest. He goes to the 
confessional, that he may receive the sacrament 
of penance. All this business of forgiving sins 
they call by that name, the "Sacrament of Pen- 
ance." He finds the priest in the Church, sitting 
in a box, or wardrobe, called "The Confessional/' 
behind a grated window. The priest must have 
on a surplice and a violet colored stole. The peni- 
tent kneels down in front of the grate, makes the 
sign of the cross and says to the priest : "In the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost, Amen. Pray, father, give me thy 
blessing, for I have sinned. I confess to Al- 
mighty God, to the blessed Virgin Mary, to 
blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John 
the Baptist, to the holy apostles, Peter and Paul, 
to all the saints, and to you, Father, that I have 
sinned exceedingly, in thought, word and deed, 
through my fault, through my most grievous 
fault." Then the penitent tells the priest all he can 
think of that he has done, said and thought, that 



72 What Protestants Believe 

was wrong, since he made his last confession. That 
nothing may be left out, it is the duty of the priest 
to probe the penitent's memory and conscience 
with pointed questions, "Have you done this? 
Have you had this thought? Have you felt this 
desire ?" When the sins are all emptied out, the 
priest afKxes some penance or penalty, such as a 
fine of money, or going around the Church on 
the knees and praying before each of the stations 
of the cross, or fasting, or letting some very 
pleasant kind of food alone, or doing something 
very unpleasant and painful. Finally, the priest 
says : "I absolve thee from thy sins, in the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost/' and the poor sinner goes away, think- 
ing that all is right between him and God. Every- 
body must go through with that performance, or 
go to hell. There is just one possible exception. 
If you can't possibly get to the confessional, and 
sincerely want to, and would if you could, and 
are sincerely sorry for your sins, God will for- 
give you without the priest and without the "Sac- 
rament of Penance." 

Now, what are our objections to the doctrine 
of auricular confession, or priestly absolution? 



What Protestants Believe 73 

We have six very serious objections. First, it is 
horribly blasphemous for any man to pretend that 
he can forgive sins. This has been stated al- 
ready. When Jesus, at Capernaum, said to the 
man who had the paralysis: "Son, thy sins be 
forgiven thee/' the scribes and Pharisees, sitting 
by, were horrified and exclaimed: "Why doth 
this man speak blasphemies? Who can forgive 
sins but God only?" Jesus made no reply. He 
knew they were right. The only reason why he 
was not guilty of blasphemy was that he was 
not a man, but the very, eternal God, clothed in 
human flesh. When we charge the priests of 
Rome with blasphemy in pretending to forgive 
sins and drive them into the corner, they get out, 
or try to, by saying: "We do not claim that we 
forgive sins. God does it. But he does it through 
us. We only declare the fact." O, I thought 
you said that Christ actually and literally gave 
Peter and the other apostles and all their succes- 
sors the power to remit and retain sins. But, 
after all, you only mean that he gave them the 
power to declare what God himself did. You 
take his words figuratively and not literally. We, 
Protestants, do the same. You say Jesus gave 



74 What Protestants Believe 

his ministers the power to declare his forgiveness 
to truly penitent sinners. We say that he gave 
them authority to proclaim the terms and condi- 
tions on which God will forgive the penitent sin- 
ner who goes to him in Jesus' name. The Ro- 
man theory, when stripped to the skin, is simply 
this: The business of forgiving sins belongs to 
the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. 
But their sole agents are the priests of Rome. 
If you wanted to buy a Steinway piano, and should 
write to the central office of the company to ship 
you one, they would refer you to their agent in 
this city, and inform you that you must purchase 
through him. If you go to God and ask Him 
to forgive your sins, He will refer you to His 
agent, Father So-and-So, the priest of the parish 
within which you reside. You must get your 
sins forgiven through him, or carry them with 
you, through time and eternity. That is what 
I call blasphemy. It is damnable blasphemy for a 
sinful man to pretend that he is the sole agent 
through whom God will grant pardon and salva- 
tion to hundreds and thousands of souls. 

The second objection to auricular confession 
is that it is the invention of a corrupt and super- 



What Protestants Believe 75 

stitious age. As I have proved, it was unknown 
to the apostles and the men who were inspired 
to write the New Testament. The Bible doctrine 
is that we are to confess our sins to God. If we 
have wronged any man, we are to confess the 
wrong to him and make restitution, if possible. 
We are to confess, in a general way, to the Church 
and to the world that we have sinned against God 
and that we now forsake our sins and take Jesus 
Christ as our Saviour and King. Christians are 
commanded by James to confess their faults to 
each other and to pray for each other. But that 
we must pour all our sinful acts and words and 
thoughts and desires into the ear of a priest is 
nowhere taught, or hinted at in the Word of God. 
The psalmist says: "I will confess my trans- 
gressions unto the Lord/' Jesus taught us to 
pray: "Our Father, who art in Heaven, for- 
give us our trespasses as we forgive them that 
trespass against us." This is the origin of the 
confessional: In the fifth century it became the 
custom to require persons who had been expelled 
from the Church for gross sins to make a con- 
fession of the same before the public congrega- 
tion, as a condition of being restored to the fel- 



76 What Protestants Believe 

lowship of God's people. This practice became 
unprofitable and disgusting to everybody. So a 
rule was made that the guilty one should confess 
privately to the minister, and he should make a 
very general report of the same to the Church. 
Out of that very simple and proper practice grad- 
ually grew the custom for everybody to go to 
the minister and confess before going to the 
Lord's table. But there was no law that Chris- 
tians must confess to the priest till the year 121 5 ; 
and the confessional, in its present shape, was 
not established till 1545. The confessional was 
not an institution of the primitive church. It was 
invented by men, at first in a harmless form and 
with a good intent. It has grown into a mighty 
engine of superstition, impiety and corruption. 

My third objection to the confessional is that 
it encourages and promotes wrongdoing and 
makes sin seem to the sinner to be a trifling af- 
fair. You Protestants have been taught that sin 
is an awful thing; that no one but God can for- 
give you ; that you can be forgiven only because 
Christ has died to atone for your sins ; and that 
God will not forgive you unless you are heartily 
sorry and intend never to sin again. But sup- 



What Protestants Believe 77 

pose there were a man close at hand, no better 
than yourself, to whom you could go, once a month 
or once a quarter or once a year, and confess your 
sins and hear him say, "I forgive thee in the 
name of God," without knowing whether you 
were really sorry for your sins, and could come 
away thinking you were forgiven because a man 
had said so, and having no other intention than 
to go again for the same purpose next month or 
next quarter or next year. Would not that re- 
duce repentance to a mere form, make sin easy 
and encourage you to continue in the path of evil ? 
I am sure it would. Perhaps some very intelli- 
gent and conscientious Romanists get some good 
out of the confessional. But I am persuaded that 
to the great mass of them it is a cheap license to 
continue in sin. A Protestant lady, who had a 
Roman Catholic servant girl who was an invet- 
erate and consummate liar, told me that she said 
to her one day : "Maggie, how dare you lie so ?" 
"O," she said, "the priest will forgive me for 
fifty cents." Her idea of religion was to sin all 
she wanted and get forgiven at stated intervals 
for a stated price. You get in debt to your gro- 
cer every day and pay once a month. The Ro- 



78 What Protestants Believe 

manist sins every day and settles with the priest 
whenever it is convenient, intending to run up 
another account, as soon as the old score is wiped 
out. The doctrine of the confessional encourages, 
if it does not directly teach, that idea. In prac- 
tice, if not in theory, the system of the confes- 
sional is a license to sin. 

My fourth objection to the confessional is that 
it is a vast engine of political despotism. The 
Roman hierarchy, with the pope at the head, has 
always undertaken to control the politics of the 
nations. The pope intends to rule this nation. 
He is putting forth all his power to that end. He 
is having splendid success. Through the priest 
wringing answers to all his questions from the 
penitent, in the confessional, the pope can know 
everything that takes place in every Roman Cath- 
olic home, in a majority of all Protestant homes, 
in every church, in ever lodge, in every business 
house, in every counting room, in the private 
councils of every political party and even in the 
most secret meetings of those societies which have 
been organized to defeat his schemes. Through 
the confessional there runs a private telegraphic 
wire, from every square acre of the surface of 



What Protestants Believe 79 

Christendom to the Vatican Palace at Rome. 
That is the chief purpose for which the confes- 
sional was invented. 

My fifth objection to the confessional is that 
it destroys domestic peace and happiness by put- 
ting the priest between the husband and the wife, 
the parent and the child, the child and the child. 
I do not say that every Roman Catholic home is 
thus divided and destroyed. But I do say that 
there is a man who can thus divide and destroy, 
if he will ; and he often does. Out of every peni- 
tent who comes to the confessional, the father 
confessor can worm everything that the penitent 
knows. The wife in the confessional will tell the 
priest things about herself which she would not 
tell her husband. He can make her reveal her 
most secret thoughts to him. She will tell him 
things about her husband and her children which 
she would not reveal to any other soul on earth. 
There is no intimacy of conversation and thought 
in all the world that compares with that which 
exists between the priest and the penitent in the 
secrecy of the confessional. To say the least, that 
intimacy is very dangerous. What husband wants 
any man to come in between himself and his wife ? 



80 What Protestants Believe 

What wife wants any man to come in between 
herself and her husband? What parent wants 
any man to come in between him and his child? 
The priest, through the confessional, is doing that 
all the time. I declare to you that it ought not 
so to be. 

The last count in my indictment of the confes- 
sional is the severest of all. I approach it with 
great reluctance. I cannot tell half the truth 
without being in danger of using language too in- 
delicate to be printed in a book. At the same time 
I may seem to some to be uncharitable and se- 
vere. I may be accused of railing, abuse and 
slander. My charge is that the confessional 
strongly tends to corrupt both the penitent and 
the priest. The theory of the confessional is that 
no sins are forgiven except those which are spe- 
cifically confessed. If you go to the confessional 
and keep back any sin, through willfulness, or ig- 
norance, or forgetfulness, that sin stands against 
you unforgiven and may sink you into hell. You 
may have done or said something sinful which 
you thought to be innocent. You may have cher- 
ished some impure thought, not realizing that it 
was unclean. You may have covered some 



What Protestants Believe 81 

iniquity which you have honestly overlooked. 
Therefore, it is the solemn duty of the father con- 
fessor, which he neglects at the peril of his own 
damnation, to probe your mind with questions. 
He must ask you if you have done this or that 
or had this or that thought. He must go to the 
very bottom of your soul, and uncover every- 
thing, with his questions. In doing this he may 
suggest to your pure mind something so utterly 
vile that you had never thought of anything a 
thousandth part as black and filthy. A stain is 
thus left on your mind which time can never 
wholly wipe away. Other such suggestions are 
added, from time to time, till the chambers of 
your imagination are haunted with demons com- 
pared with which the imps of hell seem snow- 
white angels of mercy. While the confessor pol- 
lutes your mind, he, at the same time, pollutes 
his own ; and, as he hears many more confessions 
than you make, his mind becomes a hundred 
times blacker than yours. Both priest and peni- 
tent are now in just the right condition for the 
Devil to lure them into gross and abominable sin. 
It is not safe for the purest man and the most 
virtuous woman to face each other and hold such 



82 What Protestants Believe 

conversations as must take place in the confes- 
sional I have, hidden away where no one can 
come upon it, a book, published in Latin by the 
Roman Church for the use of her priests in the 
confessional. It contains nothing but the ques- 
tions which the priest must put to his penitents. 
I have not looked into it for years. It is too ut- 
terly vile to be described. It could not pass 
through the mails, if it were printed in English. 
There are questions there, intended for the whit- 
est maidens and the most upright youths, which 
I should not dare to whisper into the ear of the 
vilest wretch in the world, at midnight, in the 
darkest corner of the deepest cellar. God, who 
reads my heart, knows that I am telling you the 
truth, or as much of the truth as I dare to tell. 
The horrors of the confessional are too black and 
putrid to be told ; they can only be imagined. Mul- 
titudes of priests, pure and noble men, have fled 
from the confessional, in utter horror, into the 
Protestant Church. If the Devil wanted to cor- 
rupt the whitest angel in Heaven, the best thing 
he could do would be to put him into the confes- 
sional, as confessor or penitent. I had an inti- 
mate friend, whom I received into the Methodist 



What Protestants Believe 83 

Episcopal Church from the priesthood of the 
Romish Church. I knew him for years — a simple 
and pure-minded man. He told me many things 
about Rome which I never saw in books. I am 
sure he told me the truth. He never manifested 
any bitterness toward the religious body in which 
he was born. I asked him why he left Rome. 
"On account of the confessional/' he answered. 
"I could not endure its vileness." I had a lady 
in one of my congregations in Buffalo, who was 
born and reared in the Roman Catholic Church. 
She told a lady, through whom her words 
reached me, that when she went to confessional 
for the first time, such vile questions were put to 
her that she never went again, and had not been 
inside a Roman Church for many years. She had 
not become a member of any Protestant Church. 
But she could not be a Romanist any longer, at 
the price of going to the confessional. I do not 
wish to wound the feelings of any honest Roman- 
ist. But I must tell the truth about the confes- 
sional. It is the blackest spot in that whole sys- 
tem of error. I will not say that the Devil in- 
vented it. But it is just what I should expect 
from him. 



84 What Protestants Believe 

The confessional is a fountain of corruption. 
In all the nations and in all the centuries it has 
been the source of seduction, adultery and for- 
nication. It holds out the temptation. It affords 
the opportunity. If the confessor is already vile, 
he has the most convenient chance to ensnare and 
destroy the female penitent. She trusts him be- 
cause of his office. He presents plausible ex- 
cuses. He justifies lust. He promises conceal- 
ment. He commands compliance. If he is pure, 
the atmosphere and conversation of the place tend 
powerfully to corrupt him and turn him into a 
fornicator and seducer. That this is fact and not 
theory is proved by the testimonies and confes- 
sions of multitudes who have abandoned the 
Church of Rome, by the writings of Roman au- 
thors and by the regulations which Rome herself 
has made to prevent and cure this evil. 

Let us look at the three sources of information. 
Many of the best and ablest men in the Roman 
priesthood have written about the confessional. 
There was Father Chiniquy, who left Rome, suf- 
fering the loss of all things but life and almost 
that. Read his "Fifty Years in the Church of 
Rome/' He tells all about the confessional. Read 



What Protestants Believe 85 

Father Crowley, who left Rome but a short time 
ago. He was one of the ablest and most honored 
priests in the diocese of Chicago. He tells about 
the confessional in his book, "Romanism a Men- 
ace to the Nation." He calls the confessional a 
"diabolical system." There are scores of such 
books. As you read them, you cannot help be- 
lieving that they tell the truth. Their authors 
were not expelled from Rome. They left for 
conscience sake. They lost all by leaving. 

Then we have the testimony of men still in 
Rome. Count de Lasteyrie, a French Catholic, 
wrote a book entitled, "History of Auricular Con- 
fession." He quotes from Tertullian, Chrysos- 
tom, Augustine, Basil, Ambrose and other church 
fathers to show that among the early Christians 
confession of sins was made to God alone. He 
represents Augustine as saying "man cannot re- 
mit sins." He says that auricular confession was 
the invention of popes and councils. He gives 
scores of pages about the rottenness of the con- 
fessional, much wore than anything which I have 
given you. I will quote one of his paragraphs: 
"What effect can be expected from these unchaste 
conversations of the confessional, which, by ex- 



86 What Protestants Believe 

citing the imagination, inspire wishes which may 
be satisfied the more easily as the satisfaction 
may reman unknown to the public? Confessors 
are inclined to give full scope to their passions 
in the confessional, inasmuch as they find, in 
every other circumstance of their calling, ob- 
stacles which their vow of continency imposes 
upon them. Indeed, what is easier than to seduce 
a young person who is known to be susceptible, 
or one who, already corrupted, ever seizes the 
opportunity of satisfying her inclinations? — an 
opportunity which invites still more to crime, as 
both parties are certain that nothing will tran- 
spire between two guilty persons equally inter- 
ested in keeping the secret." 

A Roman Catholic priest of Seville, Spain, 
wrote a book about the confessional, from which 
I will make a brief quotation. He says : "Filthy 
communication is inseparable from the confes- 
sional. The priest in the discharge of the duty 
imposed on him by the Church is bound to listen 
to the most abominable description of all manner 
of sins. He must inquire into every circumstance 
of the most profligate life. Men and women, the 
young and the old, the married and the single, 



What Protestants Believe 87 

are bound to describe to the confessor the most 
secret actions and thoughts, which are either sin- 
ful in themselves, or may be so from accidental 
circumstances. Consider the danger to which the 
priests themselves are exposed — a danger so im- 
minent that popes have, on two occasions, been 
obliged to issue the most severe laws against con- 
fessors who openly attempt the seduction of their 
female penitents." 

The late Archbishop Kenrick was one of the 
ablest and learned Roman Catholics in America. 
While he was Bishop of Philadelphia, he pub- 
lished a Latin book on Moral Philosophy in three 
volumes. He devotes seven pages to the "crime 
of solicitation," in which he gives the papal leg- 
islation concerning seduction by the confessional 
— legislation which, of course, was demanded by 
the existence of the crimes therein prohibited. I 
will give you one paragraph, translated out of 
the bishop's book. "We scarcely dare to speak 
of that atrocious crime in which the office of hear- 
ing confession is perverted to the ruin of souls 
by impious men under the influence of their lusts. 
Would that we could regard it solely a conception 
of the mind and as something invented by the 



88 What Protestants Believe 

enemies of the faith for the purposes of slander ! 
But it is not fit that we should be ignorant of the 
decrees which the pontiffs have issued to defend 
the sacredness of this sacrament." 

In the City of Seville, Spain, in the year 1563 
so many complaints against seducing confessors 
were made by females that it took one hundred 
and twenty days to register them all, and the 
prosecution of them was abandoned because of 
their prodigious number. 

But I must drop this bad-smelling subject. I 
have lifted just a little the cover of this loath- 
some cesspool. I must let it fall back. I will 
end the discussion of the subject of confession 
and forgiveness where we started. God alone can 
forgive sins. We are to go directly to Him, with- 
out any father confessor, and ask Him to for- 
give us for the sake of Christ, our great High 
Priest. That is the doctrine of the Protestant 
Church. That is the doctrine of the Apostolic 
Church. That is the doctrine of the Holy Bible. 



THE BREAD AND WINE ON THE LORD'S 
TABLE REMAIN BREAD AND WINE 

"As often as ye eat this bread and drink this 
cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come." 
I Corinthians xi 126. 

These words from the inspired pen of the 
apostle Paul declare the meaning and purpose of 
the Lord's Supper. That Sacrament was insti- 
tuted by our blessed Lord on the last night of 
his life. It has been observed, with slight excep- 
tions, by all Christian denominations ever since. 
It is called by different names, such as the Lord's 
Supper, the Eucharist, the Holy Communion and 
the Mass. The text tells why we celebrate the 
Lord's Supper. "Ye do show forth the Lord's 
death." The Greek word "show" means to an- 
nounce or proclaim, as a herald makes proclama- 
tion. The Lord's Supper is a proclamation to the 
eyes of men, as preaching is to their ears, of the 
glorious truth that Christ died for our sins. 
Every time the Lord's Supper is observed a pic- 
ture of Christ's death on the cross is held up be- 

89 



90 What Protestants Believe 

fore the eyes of every person who takes part and 
to every person who witnesses the ceremony. This 
passage also declares that this rite is to be ob- 
served by the Church till the second coming of 
Christ and the end of the age. The purpose of 
the Lord's Supper is to keep alive the doctrines 
of Christ's vicarious suffering and of his prom- 
ised return to earth ; and it is inconsistent and im- 
proper for anyone to take part in the celebration 
of the Lord's Supper who does not believe both 
of those doctrines. 

Does the Lord's Supper mean anything more 
than this ? Jesus himself said, when he instituted 
his Supper : "This cup is the New Testament in 
my blood which is shed for you." The word 
"testament" means covenant or contract. The 
Lord's Supper takes the place of the Jewish Pass- 
over. The blood of the paschal lamb, sprinkled 
on the door posts of the houses of the Jews, was 
the sign of the contract which God had made 
with them that the destroying angel should pass 
over and not harm anyone in their dwellings. 
The sacramental wine, symbolizing the blood of 
Calvary's Lamb, is the seal of God's contract 
with us to save us from eternal death. Every 



What Protestants Believe 91 

time we partake of the Lord's Supper worthily 
(that is with true faith in Him) God renews his 
pledge to save us, and we become more fully the 
objects of his saving power. Thus the Lord's 
Supper is a means of grace. 

Paul calls the Lord's Supper the "communion 
of the body and blood of Christ." That may 
mean that the bread and wine are a sign of our 
participation in the benefits of Christ's sacrificial 
death ; or, if you please, it means that, when we 
worthily partake of the Lord's Supper, we do 
actually receive these benefits. 

Again, although the Bible does not exactly 
say so, I think we may affirm that the Lord's 
Supper is a sign of fellowship among God's people 
and a bond of union. We eat and drink together 
because we are brethren and that we may grow 
in brotherly love. 

Once more, we call the Lord's Supper a Sac- 
rament. That is not, however, a Bible word. The 
Sacramentum was the oath of allegiance which 
the Roman soldier took to his Emperor. The 
Lord's Supper is our oath of allegiance to our 
Emperor, the Lord Jesus Christ. Every time we 



92 What Protestants Believe 

go to the Lord's table we solemnly renew our 
pledge to be his and his alone and forever. 

How can we make anything more of the Lord's 
Supper without running into fanaticism and folly? 
The truths which I wish to impress upon your 
minds are that the bread and grape juice on the 
Lord's table are nothing but bread and grape 
juice, after the minister has pronounced the 
prayer of. consecration. They have been con- 
secrated, or set apart, to a sacred use. But, physi- 
cally and actually, they are bread and grape juice 
just as they were before they were brought into 
the Lord's house. And, further, there is no mys- 
tic virtue in the bread and wine themselves. 
They can do you no good unless you receive them 
by faith. They may help your faith. They can- 
not take the place of faith. 

Here we and our Roman Catholic friends part 
company. They say that the sacrament has vir- 
tue in itself ; that it acts by its own inherent power. 
One of the popes says : "The sacraments contain 
grace and confer it on those who worthily re- 
ceive them." The Council of Trent says : "Who- 
soever shall affirm that grace is not conferred by 
the sacraments by their own power (ex opere 



What Protestants Believe 93 

operato), but that faith in the divine promise is 
all that is necessary to obtain grace, let him be 
accursed." They make the sacraments saving or- 
dinances in themselves. They declare that when 
the officiating priest, at the Lord's table, says 
over the bread and wine "Hoc est meum corpus" 
and "Hoc est meus sanguis" — "this is my body" 
and "this is my blood" — the bread and wine be- 
come the actual, literal, physical flesh and blood 
of Jesus Christ. They call that change "transub- 
stantiation." They affirm that in transubstantia- 
tion the elements, and every particle thereof, con- 
tain Christ whole and entire — divinity, human- 
ity, soul, body and blood, with all their component 
parts. The whole God and man Christ Jesus is 
contained in the bread and wine, and in every 
particle of the bread, and every drop of the wine. 
If you were in front of the altar of a Roman Cath- 
olic church, and a priest stood there and, after 
speaking those mystic words, "Hoc est meum 
corpus," should take up the wafer and break off 
a crumb so small that you could not see it and 
should hold it up before your eyes, it would con- 
tain, and be, the whole of Christ — body, bones, 
blood, soul, humanity and deity — and it would 



94 What Protestants Believe 

be your duty to fall down before it and worship 
it as your God. If you should come and kneel at 
the alter, the priest would place a wafer, or a por- 
tion of one in your mouth, and you would eat it, 
and in doing so you would masticate and swallow 
the literal flesh of your Savior, and his body, 
soul and divinity would pass into your stomach 
and, undergoing digestion, become a part of your- 
self. At the last supper in Jerusalem the apostles 
ate the flesh and drank the blood of their Master, 
just as literally and actually as though they had 
taken a knife and cut pieces of flesh from the limbs 
of Jesus and chewed and swallowed it warm and 
dripping with blood. If our Romanist friends 
do not use the words of that last sentence, they 
do say what means just that; for they insist that 
the bread and wine on their altars are changed 
into Christ's flesh and blood in the most literal 
meaning of those words. They also say that the 
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper (or the Mass, 
as they call it) is a real sacrifice; that every time 
the mass is celebrated Christ is actually offered 
up as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. 

Let us examine this latter statement first. The 
Mass is a real "unbloody sacrifice/' Well, if it is 



What Protestants Believe 95 

unbloody, it has no value; for the word of God 
declares that "without the shedding of blood there 
is no remission of sins." In the second place the 
Bible declares, in Hebrews X:i4, that "by one 
offering Christ hath forever perfected them that 
are sanctified," and Peter says in his first letter, 
"Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just for 
the unjust, that he might bring us to God," and 
Christ himself exclaimed on the cross, "It is fin- 
ished/' and yet Rome declares that Calvary is 
repeated every time the Mass is celebrated, and 
Christ has been offered up millions on millions 
of times since her hierarchy invented her doc- 
trine of the change of the bread and wine into 
flesh and blood. 

On what does Rome base the doctrine of tran- 
substantiation ? So far as the Bible is concerned, 
she bases it on the words of Jesus, at the last 
supper, "This is my body" and "This is my blood," 
and the words he spoke to the Jews, "Except ye 
eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his 
blood, ye have no life in you." Romanists take 
those words literally and physically. We Prot- 
estants take them figuratively and spiritually. 
The Bible abounds in figurative language: 



96 What Protestants Believe 

and everybody who talks uses figurative language. 
Why could not Christ use figurative language? 
We know he did constantly. He was the great- 
est user of parables among all the teachers who 
ever lived. Why may we not believe that he was 
using figurative language when he said: "This 
bread is my body?" In telling the meaning of 
Pharaoh's dream, Joseph said: "The seven fat 
cows are seven years of plenty; the seven lean 
cows are seven years of famine." Did Joseph 
mean that the cows were actually years? Any 
little child in the Primary Department of our 
Sunday School would understand that Joseph 
meant : "The seven lean cows represent, or stand 
for, seven years of plenty." Jesus said to his dis- 
ciples : "Ye are the salt of the earth." Did he 
mean that they were literally chloride of sodium? 
He might have meant that, if he had been talk- 
ing to Lot's wife. But talking to human beings 
like us, Christians, he cannot mean anything more 
than that we are like salt ; salt, in certain respects, 
represents those who have the saving grace of 
God in their hearts. Jesus appeared to John on 
the Isle of Patmos and said: "I am alpha and 
omega. I am the root and offspring of David 



What Protestants Believe 97 

and the bright and morning star." Could he have 
meant that he was literally the first and last let- 
ters of the Greek alphabet; that he was a root; 
that he was a star? If he was divine, he could 
not literally be all these things at the same time. 
It seems to me that the biggest ignoramus in the 
world would understand that he meant that he 
was represented by the first letter of the alphabet 
and the last ; that he was like a root ; that he was 
like a morning star. Jesus said : "I am the way. " 
Did he mean that he was literally a road ? He said : 
"I am the door." Could he have meant that he 
was literally a material door, swinging on its 
hinges? "I am the good shepherd." Did he 
literally tend sheep? No, he was a carpenter. 
"I am the vine; ye are the branches." Did he 
mean that he was literally a grape vine and 
his disciples were literal branches, growing 
out of him and bearing literal grapes? Every- 
body understands what this figurative language 
means. He meant: "Look at that grape vine. 
It represents me ; and the branches represent my 
disciples. That door represents me. Just as you 
have to go through a door to get into a house, 
so you must enter Heaven through me." "See 



98 What Protestants Believe 

that shepherd. In his constant care for his sheep 
he represents me in my care for the souls that 
trust in me." In all these quotations the words 
am and is and are mean "resemble," "represent," 
"stand for" and similar ideas. So when Jesus 
said : "This is my body," "This is my blood," he 
meant, "This bread represents my body," "This 
wine represents my blood." We must not throw 
away our reason and common sense, when we 
read the Bible, and make fools of ourselves and 
turn the word of God into nonsense and fool- 
ishness. 

Everybody talks in figurative language, and 
nobody misunderstands. Figurative language is 
just as plain and definite as language which is to 
be taken literally; and it is much more forcible 
and is longer remembered. A man undertakes to 
describe a worthless and impracticable fellow, of 
which no good use can be made. He condenses 
a whole paragraph into a pithy figure of speech. 
He says: "He is a crooked stick." Is anybody 
so brainless as to suppose that he means that the 
fellow is literally a stick of wood twisted out of 
shape? Why should anyone be so foolish as to 
suppose that when Jesus said, "This bread is my 



What Protestants Believe 99 

body/' he meant that the piece of baked dough 
had actually been turned into animal tissue, filled 
with nerves and minute blood vessels ? 

Jesus could not have meant that the piece of 
bread, which he held in his hand, was his own 
flesh, and that his whole humanity and divinity 
were in the bread; for there he was right before 
them. Jesus was not the bread. The bread was 
not Jesus. He was one thing and the bread was 
quite another. It is altogether probable that Jesus 
ate with his disciples and drank with them. He 
ate some of the bread of which he had said : 'This 
is my body/' and drank some of the wine, of 
which he said: "This is my blood." That is, 
Christ ate his own flesh and drank his own blood. 
That is an absurd, a horrible and a disgusting 
thought ! 

Jesus did tell the Jews that they must eat his 
flesh and drink his blood if they would have eter- 
nal life. In their grossness and spiritual stupid- 
ity, they may have understood him literally. But 
he made himself plain. He said: "He that be- 
lieveth on me hath everlasting life." "Whoso 
eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath ever- 
lasting life." Put those two sentences together. 



100 What Protestants Believe 

They were spoken to the same crowd. Do you 
not get the meaning? To eat Christ's flesh and 
to drink his blood is to believe on him. I suppose 
he put the idea of believing on him into that strik- 
ing form, that he might impress the minds of 
those people and make them remember his words. 
And then you must remember that he had fed 
them miraculously, a few hours before, and they 
had come to him to get another good meal. So 
he told them that he himself was the bread they 
most needed and that they were to feed on him 
by faith. The whole lesson is spoiled, if you take 
the Saviour's words literally. 

If the bread and wine on the Lord's table be- 
come flesh and blood, the change is a miracle. 
Does a miracle take place every time the Mass is 
celebrated in a Roman Catholic Church ? Certain 
facts characterize all the miracles of the Bible. 
First, they are rare — few and far between. There 
were a great many miracles wrought in Bible 
times. But you should remember that they cov- 
ered a period of more than four thousand years. 
If they were distributed evenly, they would stand 
very far apart in time, and much farther in space. 
They were very exceptional. But the miracle of 



What Protestants Believe 101 

transubstantiation takes place hundreds of thou- 
sands of times, in hundreds of thousands of places, 
every week. Since Christ instituted the Lord's 
Supper the miracle of changing bread and wine 
to flesh and blood has been performed millions of 
millions of times. Do you believe that the Al- 
mighty, who usually works according to fixed 
laws, has stepped outside of his ordinary track 
so many times and made so great a miracle so 
exceedingly cheap? Do you believe that he has 
given every Roman Catholic priest, no matter how 
careless and ignorant and vile (there have been 
vile and ignorant priests as there have been vile 
and ignorant Protestant ministers), the power 
to turn bread and wine into the literal flesh and 
blood of his only-begotten Son, whenever he will, 
by simply mumbling two short Latin sentences 
over the plate and cup? Believe it if you can. 
It is too much for me. 

Again, the miracles of the Bible were almost 
always wrought to confirm some divine message 
or to prove the truth of some doctrine. But what 
doctrine does transubstantiation prove ? Nobody 
knows that the bread has been turned into flesh. 
It was bread before the priest said: "Hoc est 



102 What Protestants Believe 

meum corpus/' It seems to be bread now. If 
the priest, standing at the altar, could hold up a 
piece of bread and say: "Beloved, I am a mes- 
senger sent from God to preach the everlasting 
gospel. That you may know that I come from 
God, I will turn this bread into flesh," and then 
could perform the miracle and let the crowd come 
up and feel of the morsel in his hand and taste 
it and see for themselves that the bread had really 
become flesh, there would be some value in such 
a miracle as that. As it is, the priest professes 
to turn the bread into flesh and the wine into 
blood. But, so far as taste and smell and touch 
and sight and chemical analysis can determine, 
the bread and wine are bread and wine still. The 
only evidence we have that the priest has turned 
the bread into flesh is his own word. If his word 
is sufficient evidence for the miracle, why do we 
need the miracle to prove that he is a messenger 
sent to us from God. There is no evidential value 
to a miracle which does not seem to be a miracle. 
Once more, miracles always speak for them- 
selves. When Jesus turned water into wine at 
Cana, everybody who tasted the beverage said it 
was wine, and the governor of the feast said it 



What Protestants Believe 103 

was the best they had had since the seven days' 
feast began. When God turned Aaron's rod into 
a serpent, in the presence of Pharaoh, it looked 
like a serpent and it proved that it was by swal- 
lowing the serpent-rods of the king's magicians. 
When Moses, by the hand of God, turned the 
River of Egypt into blood, it looked like blood 
and smelt and tasted so bad that the Egyptians 
could not drink it. Suppose Moses had said to 
them : "I will turn your waters into blood," and, 
after he had said : "Hocus pocus," the water had 
looked and smelt and tasted just as it always 
had. Would they not have laughed him to scorn 
and called him a fool and a fraud. What if Jesus, 
at the grave of his friend, had said: "Lazarus, 
come forth," and the dead man had not stirred, 
and his cold, closed eyes had not opened, and, 
turning to the sisters, the Master had said : "Dry 
your tears, your brother is alive." What a mock- 
ery of sorrow that would have been. But when 
the Lord of life spoke, the dead arose and walked 
forth, and everybody knew he was alive. What 
sort of a miracle is it that does not reveal itself 
to any of the senses, which nobody can discover, 
which has to be accepted on the credit of the per- 



104 What Protestants Believe 

son who pretends to perform it ? Suppose that I 
claim to have power to turn lead to gold. You 
bring me a piece of lead pipe. I hold it up before 
you and say: "Hocus pocus." Then I tell you 
that it is gold. You come up and examine it. It 
looks like lead. You take your pocket knives, and 
it cuts like lead. You hold it in the gas flame, and 
it melts like lead. You take it to a chemist, and 
he smiles at your ignorance and tells you that it 
is lead. What would you think of me? What 
would you call me? If the priests of Rome did 
actually change bread to flesh and wine to blood, 
and had been doing it for hundreds of years in 
thousands of places, and had never once failed 
when they tried (that is what they claim), every- 
body would know it, there would be no chance 
for debate, and the doctrine of transubstantiation 
would be as firmly established as the astronomical 
truth that the earth revolves around the sun. But 
when they have changed the bread to flesh and 
the wine to blood, the elements look and feel and 
taste and smell just as they did before and pos- 
sess all the chemical properties they had before, 
and no others. How can we help saying that the 
whole thing is a delusion and a fraud? Is there 



What Protestants Believe 105 

a Roman Catholic priest in all the world who hon- 
estly believes that he has the power to change 
bread to flesh and wine to blood ? 

The doctrine of transubstantiation contradicts 
an axiom of natural science. The same body can 
be in but one place at the same time. The body 
of our Saviour cannot be in Heaven and on earth, 
and on ten thousand altars, whole and entire, at 
the same time. That is what the priests of Rome 
assert. I suppose that, every Sabbath morning, 
there are millions of pieces of consecrated wafer 
in the world. Every one of them is Christ's body 
whole and entire. Christ's body is in a million 
places at the same time. It is his body, observe. 
If they only said that Christ's spiritual presence 
is everywhere we would not object. That we be- 
lieve. But that his body, in which he rose from 
the tomb and ascended into heaven, is in a mil- 
lion places at one and the same time, we cannot 
believe. 

Again, the doctrine of transubstantiation con- 
tradicts a mathematical axiom. One is one, and 
not two, nor any other number. A single thing 
is not a thousand or a million things. According 
to Rome, the single body of our Lord is in innu- 



106 What Protestants Believe 

merable places at once, or else his single body is 
ten thousand bodies. There are some things 
which the Almighty cannot do. He cannot make 
twice two three. He cannot make one a thou- 
sand. He cannot put the same body into a thou- 
sand places at the same time. Jie cannot put 
the whole body, soul and blood of his only-begot- 
ten son into a million crumbs of bread at the same 
instant. And yet, Rome declares, we must believe 
this or be eternally damned. 

I object to the doctrine of transubstantiation 
because it is a human invention. It was unknown 
to the apostolic Church. You can find no trace 
of it in the New Testament, unless it be in the 
Scripture passages which I have expounded. His- 
tory shows clearly when and how it came to be 
put into the creed of the Church of Rome. A 
monk named Eutyches seems to have been the 
first person who suggested that the bread on the 
communion table was the literal flesh of Christ. 
That was in the year 400, or thereabouts. It 
was a long time before the new creed gained any 
considerable number of converts. It was con- 
demned by Pope Gelasius. Hear what that in- 
fallible Head of the Church said: "The sacra- 



What Protestants Believe 107 

ment of the body and blood of Christ, which we 
receive, is a divine thing. Nevertheless, the 
substance or nature of the bread and wine ceases 
not to exist ; and, assuredly, the image and simili- 
tude of the body and blood of Christ are cele- 
brated/' That is what we Protestants believe. 
Many other popes and several councils of the 
Church condemned the new and strange doctrine. 
All the early church fathers teach the Protestant 
doctrine of the Lord's Supper. There are a few 
of them who, in some of their writings, use lan- 
guage which seems to agree with the present Ro- 
man Catholic theory. But, in other parts of their 
books, they make it clear that they were using only 
figurative forms of speech. There was a fierce 
war of words over the matter, which lasted for 
centuries. At last, in the dark ages, when science 
and learning were almost dead, and all sorts of 
superstitions were freely accepted, a pope arose 
who made up his mind that the bread and wine 
do become the literal body and blood of Christ. 
His name was Nicholas. He called a council of 
bishops and, under threats of death by fire, in- 
duced them to vote that: "The bread and wine 
on the altar are the Lord's real body and blood, 



108 What Protestants Believe 

which, not only in a sacramental but also in a 
sensible manner, are broken by the hands of the 
priest and ground by the teeth of the faithful." 
That was about the year 1045. And yet the new 
doctrine did not fully get into the creed of the 
Roman Catholic Church till 12 15. Down to that 
date a man could get to Heaven without believ- 
ing that the bread becomes flesh and the wine 
blood. But now you must believe that or be ever- 
lastingly damned in the flames of hell. Whether 
that curse, pronounced by the Council of Trent, 
reacts upon those who lived and died before the 
year 121 5, I do not know. But I should suppose 
that what is true now must have always been 
true. 

Another objection to the doctrine of transub- 
stantiation is that it exalts the priest too far above 
the people and tends to fill him with pride and 
unholy lust for power. It makes him a miracle- 
worker. It endows him with divine power. It 
puts the lives of the people in his hands. They 
cannot sustain spiritual life without eating the 
flesh of Christ, and they cannot get the flesh of 
Christ except from the hands of the priest. It is 
not safe for fallen human beings to have such 



What Protestants Believe 109 

power. The ministers of the meek and lowly 
Jesus ought not to have the temptation to such 
self-exaltation placed in their way. Because they 
can turn a wafer into God, the people almost wor- 
ship them, and they become — many of them — 
spiritual despots. Notice the broad line which the 
doctrine of the Mass draws between the ministry 
and the laity. Although Paul, writing to the 
Church at Corinth, says in our text, "As oft as ye 
drink this cup, ye do show forth the Lord's death 
till his coming again," the priests of Rome do not 
let the lay members of the Church have a drop 
of the communion wine. Where do they get 
their authority for that ? They have helped them- 
selves to it, contrary to the command of Jesus 
himself. 

Another objection to the doctrine of transub- 
stantiation is that it is a kind of idolatry. The 
priest turns a bit of bread into God, and the people 
fall down and worship it. In some countries the 
people call the consecrated wafer "the good God." 
In some countries the "host," as they call the 
consecrated bread, is carried through the streets 
in a splendid procession, and the people, all along 
the line of march, fall down on their knees and 



110 What Protestants Believe 

faces and worship a piece of dough. Those words 
might shock a devout Romanist. But do they 
not express the truth? If they do not worship 
the bread, what are they doing. 

The doctrine of transubstantiation turns the 
spiritual religion of Christ into a lifeless form. 
The Bible teaches us that it is faith in an unseen 
Christ that saves the soul. This doctrine teaches 
that we receive the life and saving grace of Christ 
by eating his literal flesh and taking into our 
stomachs the physical Christ. Paul declared that 
he did not know Christ after the flesh. The 
priests of Rome cannot say that. 

This doctrine which I am opposing degrades 
the atonement of Christ. The Bible declares that 
he made a perfect atonement for the sins of the 
whole world on the cross. As he was expiring 
he exclaimed: "It is finished." But Rome de- 
clares that Christ must be offered for our sins 
every Sabbath day, and oftener, and puts the 
blessed Christ into the hands of a man (he might 
be the vilest of the vile) to be offered up for us. 

The last count in my indictment against the 
doctrine of transubstantiation is that it makes 
infidels. Almost all the educated and intelligent 



What Protestants Believe 111 

men in Roman Catholic countries are infidels. 
They know nothing about any kind of Christian* 
ity but Romanism. Romanism demands that they 
shall believe that the priests — some of them very 
ignorant and vicious — can turn bread and wine 
to flesh and blood. They know that that is a fraud 
and a lie, and so they conclude that the whole 
Christian scheme is a delusion or an invention of 
selfish and scheming men. It is a well-known 
fact that France and Italy are nations of infidels. 
The Roman Church with its pretended miracles 
is the chief cause. 

I have heard this story, which I believe to be 
true. A very bright and well-educated Ameri- 
can lady married into a wealthy family of Ro- 
manists. She was wealthy before her marriage 
and belonged to a family of great influence and 
respectability. She remained a Protestant, as 
she had been born and educated. Her husband 
and his friends were very anxious to convert her 
to their faith. Every effort was put forth. The 
most cultured and skillful and winning priests 
and bishops visited her and tried to remove her 
objections to the doctrines and practices of the 
Church of Rome. One after another of the forts 



112 What Protestants Believe 

built around her mind and soul were captured till 
only one remained. She told her teachers that 
she could not believe the doctrine of transubstaru- 
tiation. They could not convince her that every 
priest could make God out of dough. Finally she 
proposed a test. She said to the bishop : "If you 
will consent to have an altar erected in my home 
and turn my parlor into a chapel, and you will 
come and celebrate the Mass here, and officiate 
yourself, and let me prepare the wafer (accord- 
ing to your direction), I will join your Church." 
The bishop consented, although it was against the 
rules. But the game was so big, he thought he 
could afford to depart from the usual practice. 
So everything was made ready, and the celebra- 
tion of the Mass began, with the bishop for cele- 
brant and many friends to communicate. Just as 
the bishop came to the place where he had to eat 
the wafer, which was now nothing but the flesh 
of Jesus Christ, the lady called to him sharply: 
"Don't eat that ; I have put strychnine in it." The 
ceremony stopped right there; and the lady re- 
mained a Protestant. Now, if the Right Reverend 
Bishop had really believed what he professed to 
believe, that the wafer was no longer bread, but 



What Protestants Believe 113 

the real, literal body, soul, blood and divinity of 
Jesus Christ, he would not have hesitated an in- 
stant to take it into his mouth and stomach. There 
could be no strychnine in Christ's body, in Christ's 
soul, in Christ's blood, in Christ's divinity. As 
soon as the Romanist begins to say: "But" and 
"and" and "well" and "you don't understand" and 
"we don't mean that the bread becomes Christ's 
body in that sense," he admits all that we Prot- 
estants claim, namely, that the bread on the Lord's 
table is Christ's body in a symbolic sense, that it 
represents his body, and the wine represents his 
blood. That is the eternal truth of God, and if 
Rome were wise, she would abandon that relic 
of a superstitious and barbarous age and say 
with Paul: "As often as ye eat this bread and 
drink this cup, ye do show — proclaim — the Lord's 
death till he come." 



114 What Protestants Believe 



I was well grounded in the faith of the old his- 
toric Church, but through the reading of the Gos- 
pels and the writings of the Apostles, my mind 
was awakened and quickened into a new life. / 
began to think. Then I found that the mutterings 
of a man in a dead tongue brought no sense of 
forgiveness of sin ; prayers to dead saints, or the 
Virgin Mary, left no assurance of answers there- 
to; and a wafer blessed by a priest was a poor 
substitute for Him who says, "I am the Bread of 
Life" 

Samuel McGerald, D. D. 



THE ROAD TO HEAVEN DOES NOT RUN 
THROUGH HELL. 

"As far as the east is from the west, so far hath 
he removed our transgression from us." Psalm 
ciii:i2. 

This is a wonderful passage. The writer must 
have had great scientific knowledge. Why did he 
not say: "As far as the north is from the south, so 
far hath he removed our transgressions from us ?" 
That would have been a fearful blunder, which, 
perhaps, no one would have noticed then, but 
which would excite the ridicule and scorn of all 
infidels today. The Spirit of infinite wisdom kept 
the psalmist from saying north and south and 
made him say "east and west." The north and 
south are only twelve thousand miles apart, while 
the distance between the east and the west is in- 
finite. The meaning of the text is that when God 
forgives our sins, his forgiveness is perfect; he 
puts our sins so far away from us that they will 
never come back, and we need not fear that the 
penalty for them will ever be visited upon us. Is 
this consoling and joyous thought presented any- 

115 



116 What Protestants Believe 

where else in the Bible ? Yes, in very many places. 
In the beginning of this psalm we read: "Bless 
the Lord, O my soul and forget not all his bene- 
fits, who forgiveth all thine iniquities." When 
God forgives our iniquities, he forgives not a part 
of them, but every one. The prophet Isaiah, in 
praising God for what he had done for him, says : 
'Thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back." 
In the forty-third chapter of Isaiah, God is rep- 
resented as saying: "I am he that blotteth out 
thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will 
not remember thy sins." I do not know just what 
forgetfulness is with God. I do not suppose that 
he forgets in the absolute meaning of that word ; 
but he acts and feels toward the pardoned sinner 
as he would if he had actually forgotten his sins, 
as he would if those sins had never been com- 
mitted. The same thought is repeated in the 
tenth chapter of Hebrews : 'Their sins and inqui- 
ries will I remember no more." Then we have 
such passages as these : "If we walk in the light, 
as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with 
another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son 
cleaneth us from all sin," and, "If we confess our 
sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, 



What Protestants Believe 117 

and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." It 
is the teaching of God's word, from beginning to 
end, that when God forgives sin he does it per- 
fectly and absolutely, so that the pardoned sinner 
is as innocent before high Heaven as though he 
had never sinned. When a sinner is forgiven, 
there is nothing left over for him to work out, 
either in this world or the world to come. 

The Bible also teaches that when God forgives 
a man his sins he, at the same time, begins a work 
of cleansing. He instantly gives him a new heart 
and "renews a right spirit within him." He takes 
away the love of sin and implants a desire to do 
the perfect will of Heaven. The man who plans 
to sin every day and to get forgiven at longer or 
shorter intervals is not a Christian at all; he has 
not learned the first letter in the alphabet of sal- 
vation. If the pardoned and regenerated sinner 
follows on to know the Lord, he continually 
grows in grace and holiness, till he reaches a point 
where the blood of Ctitiat cleanses him from all 
sin and he is fit for the inheritance of the saints 
in glory. If he dies before that time, if he dies 
walking in the light and striving after perfect 
holiness, God cuts short the work of purification, 



118 What Protestants Believe 

makes him whiter than snow in the blood of the 
Lamb and puts him among all the blood-washed 
before the celestial throne. Nothing but the blood 
of Christ can cleanse the soul, and the cleansing 
work must all be finished before the soul leaves 
the shores of time. Nothing but the blood of 
Christ can cleanse from sin ; and all its cleansing 
power is at the command of faith, here and now. 
Is there any Scripture authority for saying that 
the dying Christian goes directly into that state 
and place of blessedness which we call Heaven? 
Let us see. When David's infant son died, he 
said to those about him : "I shall go to him, but 
he shall not return to me." Where had that in- 
nocent, sinless infant gone? Is there any doubt 
that it went to the home of the blessed? David 
said, in substance, 'There is where I shall go 
when I die." David, at this time, had repented 
of his foul crimes and had been forgiven. When 
the beggar Lazarus died he "was carried by the 
angels into Abraham's bosom." That was the 
name which the Jews gave to Paradise, the home 
of the blessed and holy after death. There was 
no delay whatever in the case of Lazarus. He 
went straight from Dives' back door to the home 



What Protestants Believe 119 

of the glorified saints and angels, as Dives went 
straight to a place of torment. Christ said to the 
dying thief on the cross: 'This day shalt thou 
be with me in Paradise/' If anybody ought to 
spend a period of cleansing and preparation, after 
death, before being admitted to the presence of 
God, it would seem to be a robber and murderer, 
who repented just before he drew his last breath. 
If he, after a life of crime, without baptism, with- 
out the Lord's Supper, without joining the 
Church, without confirmation, without any of the 
means of grace, repenting and praying and be- 
lieving in the agonies of death, was fit for Para- 
dise, certainly the godly men and women in our 
churches, who have walked with Christ for a 
score of years, ought to go straight to Paradise 
when they die. Paul spoke of death as depart- 
ing and being with Christ. The dying Stephen 
prayed: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit/' Do 
you think that prayer was answered? If it was 
the dying saint went directly to the place where 
Jesus is. John on Patmos "heard a voice from 
Heaven saying, Write, Blessed are the dead who 
die in the Lord from henceforth: yea saith the 
Spirit, that they may rest from their labors ; and 



120 What Protestants Believe 

their works do follow them." Blessed means 
happy. The dead who die in the Lord are all 
true Christians. "Henceforth" means from the 
very moment when they die. So we know posi- 
tively that all who die in the Lord go, without 
any delay, to a state and place of rest and hap- 
piness. This is the doctrine of Protestantism, of 
primitive Christianity and of God's holy word. 

But Rome contradicts all these words. Rome 
says that when God, through the priest and the 
confessional, forgives sin, he does not forgive it 
perfectly. He forgives so far as the eternal con- 
sequences of sin are concerned; he forgives so 
far that the penitent may get to Heaven at last ; 
but he leaves a portion of the penalty of sin to be 
worked out and suffered for in this world and in 
the world to come. King David prayed : "Purge 
me with hyssop and I shall be clean ; wash me and 
I shall be whiter than snow." But if there had 
been a Roman Catholic priest at his elbow, he 
would have said: "No, David, you are asking 
for too much. God will not make you whiter than 
snow, or as white as snow. He will let you into 
Heaven some time. But he will leave you spotted 
with sin, and you will have to have the spots 



What Protestants Believe 121 

rubbed off gradually by doing penance and suf- 
fering unknown agonies here and hereafter." 

Rome holds that a few souls — one in a million, 
perhaps — are so fine and white and holy that they 
pass, at death, directly into Paradise. But the 
great mass of her members, including popes, car- 
dinals, bishops, archbishops, abbots, monks, nuns, 
priests and laymen, go first to a place of torment, 
called Purgatory. Where Purgatory is no one 
of them positively knows. Some think it is down 
in the heart of the earth, from which such vol- 
canoes as Vesuvius, which is near the headquar- 
ters of Romanism, vomits out its fire and brim- 
stone. All agree that it is a place of punishment 
and that fire is the instrument of punishment 
which is employed. Some say that, while it lasts, 
it is as bad as hell itself. It is a temporary hell. 
And so we may say that Rome teaches that, for 
the vast majority of her people, the road to 
Heaven runs through hell. Purgatory is for Ro- 
man Catholics alone. It is the temporary abode 
of imperfect Christians. In Purgatory good Ro- 
manists suffer for their sins, which God did not 
remove as far from them as the east is from the 
west, and have the stains of sin and the remains 



122 What Protestants Believe 

of the carnal mind and all their evil dispositions 
burned out. All who go to Purgatory will finally 
go through to Heaven. 

No Protestant ever goes to Purgatory. Every 
Protestant goes straight to hell, when he dies. 
There is no possible help for that. All Roman 
Catholic authorities are unanimous in that dec- 
laration. There is no possible salvation for any- 
one who does not belong to the Church of Rome, 
and who does not die in that faith. When we 
charge our Romanist friends with holding that 
uncharitable creed, they try to deny it; I doubt 
not that some of them think it is not so. But all 
of their theologians and all their books and all 
their councils and all their popes declare that 
there is no salvation but in union with Rome. I 
was talking with a very pleasant and intelligent 
lady a few weeks ago at her home. She said : 'T 
am a Catholic. But I am not one of the kind who 
believe that all Catholics will go to Heaven, and 
all Protestants will go to hell/' She, evidently, 
was not well instructed upon the creed of her 
church. All true, loyal, obedient and well in- 
formed Romanists do, and must, believe that all 
Protestants go to hell. Just look at the matter, for 



What Protestants Believe 123 

a moment. There is no salvation without the for- 
giveness of sin ; and there is no forgiveness except 
through the priest and the confessional. We Prot- 
estants have never been absolved by a priest. 
There is no salvation without eating the literal 
flesh of Jesus Christ. We Protestants have never 
been to the Mass to get Christ's flesh from the 
hands of his priests. There is no salvation without 
the mediation of the Virgin Mary. We quoted in 
a previous chapter, over and over again, from 
Ligouri's "Glories of Mary/' that the Virgin is 
the only way to Christ. Ligouri says — and the 
infallible pope endorses Ligouri — "Whoever 
wishes to find Jesus, will not find him except 
through Mary." We Protestants honor the mem- 
ory of that good woman ; but we utterly repudiate 
her mediation. One more, there is no salvation 
except in union with the Pope of Rome. The 
Vatican Council, held at Rome in 1870, sent out 
this decree: "All the faithful must believe that 
the Roman Pontiff is the successor of the blessed 
Peter, and the true Vicar of Christ and the head 
of the whole Church. This is the doctrine of 
Catholic truth, from which no one can depart 
without loss of faith and salvation." But we 



124 What Protestants Believe 

Protestants do most emphatically depart from 
that "truth" and pronounce it a lie. So we Prot- 
estants are all damned four times over. Protes- 
tantism has certainly produced some very beau- 
tiful, and Christlike characters, both men and 
women, who loved God and their fellow men and 
served Jesus Christ and bore his image and 
blessed the world and died in holy rapture, with 
the atmosphere of Heaven all about them, confi- 
dently expecting to go to Heaven. But they are 
all in hell, simply because they could not believe, 
what the Bible nowhere teaches, that the priest 
can forgive sin; the bread and wine on the Lord's 
table become flesh and blood; that the Vir- 
gin Mary is the mediator between God and 
man; and that the Pope of Rome is the head of 
the Church. If you were a good, true, loyal Ro- 
man Catholic, fully accepting all that your Church 
teaches, and had two daughters, and one of them 
should become a Protestant and the wife of a 
Protestant minister and should be as pure as an 
angel and as full of good works as Dorcas of old ; 
and the other should become a vile woman of the 
town, but should continue in union with the pope 
and his Church : you would mourn more over the 



What Protestants Believe 125 

former than the latter. There would be abso- 
lutely no hope for the accursed heretic, who had 
left the bosom of Holy Mother Church ; while the 
other, by receiving the last sacraments of the 
Church in the dying hour, could, some time, get 
home to Heaven. The most damning of all sins 
is to be out of harmony with the Church of Rome 
and to refuse to accept her unreasonable and un- 
scriptural doctrines, invented by superstitious and 
ignorant men, in the darkness of the middle ages. 
We are more charitable than our Roman Catho- 
lic friends and neighbors. They are bound to be- 
lieve that we are all on the road to hell. We 
believe that very many of them, in spite of the 
dangerous errors which have been taught them 
from the cradle, are Christians and are on the 
road to Heaven. 

Purgatory is a temporary hell, fitted up for im- 
perfect Christians, for Roman Catholics alone. 
There they will be tortured with fire till they 
have suffered an equivalent for all their unfor- 
given sins and till all the stains of inbred and 
actual sin have been burned out of their souls. 
How long they will have to wallow in those awful 
flames, no one pretends to know. But some of the 



126 What Protestants Believe 

theologians of Rome believe that it will, in some 
cases, be millions of years. The length of time 
will depend upon the degree of their sinfulness; 
but not so much upon that as upon the amount 
of money their friends on earth are able, or will- 
ing, to expend in hiring priests to offer prayers 
and say masses in their behalf, or in the purchase 
of indulgences for the dead. If a rich man and 
a poor man, equally good or equally bad, die 
and go to Purgatory at the same time, the poor 
man will have to stay there the longer time. The 
difference may amount to thousands of years. 

There are two ways to shorten the time of a 
soul in the torments of Purgatory. If you ask 
what they are, the answer is "Indulgences" and 
"Masses." The Roman Catholic theory is that 
there is an immense bank in Heaven, filled with 
the super-abundant merits of Christ and his 
saints. All the merits of Christ's sufferings and 
death are there on deposit and the merits of the 
saints who lived better lives than it was neces- 
sary for them to live. The pope and his priests 
hold the keys to that bank. The pope is the pres- 
ident of the bank ; the cardinals are directors ; the 
bishops and priests are cashiers and tellers and 



What Protestants Believe 127 

.officers of different grades and ranks. They can 
transfer these deposits of merit and check them 
over to the credit of the living and the dead, so 
as to lessen the severity of their punishment and 
shorten their stay amid the flames of Purgatory. 
Some Protestants have a false idea of this mat- 
ter of Indulgences. They think that a man can 
buy a license to commit sin. Some of the Ro- 
manists themselves think so; and the priests let 
them think so, in order to make the business of 
selling Indulgences more thriving and profitable. 
The bandits of Italy, just before starting out to 
commit robbery and murder, will go to a priest 
and buy an Indulgence, thinking that that will 
save them from guilt for all the innocent blood 
they shed. In the days of Luther, Tetzel sold 
Indulgences to raise money for Pope Leo X to 
finish St. Peter's Church at Rome. He told the 
ignorant multitude that he could sell them a full 
license to commit any sin and crime they might 
desire — so much for murder, so much for adul- 
tery, so much for theft. But that is not the idea. 
I want to be perfectly just with Rome. She 
teaches that no one will get to Heaven, unless his 
sins have been forgiven in this world by a priest. 



128 What Protestants Believe 

But an Indulgence will remove, or diminish, the 
suffering which he must endure, here or in Pur- 
gatory, after his sins have been forgiven. One 
of the strongest objections against the doctrine of 
Indulgences is that it is sure to be misunderstood 
by the multitude, and the priests are under great 
temptation to let, or make, them misunderstand. 
The people think money will buy the right to 
commit sin with impunity; and their spiritual 
guides — some of them — encourage them to think 
so. Well, then, the Pope and his priests can grant 
Indulgences to shorten Purgatory and to cool its 
flames. How are Indulgences obtained? By at- 
tending the Pope's Jubilee, by making a pilgrim- 
age to some sacred place, by attending worship 
in some designated church, by giving money to 
build or repair a church, or for some other such 
purpose. If I were a Roman Catholic priest and 
were raising money to build a new church, or to 
pay a debt on an old one, I should get authority 
from the Pope or bishop, if I could, to offer so 
much of Indulgence, so many days off of Purga- 
torial pains, to everyone who would give so much 
money for my cause. It could be applied for the 
benefit of the living or the dead. That is a very 



What Protestants Believe 129 

common way to raise money in the Roman Cath- 
olic Church. 

The other way to draw on the Bank of Heaven 
for the shortening and lessening of Purgatorial 
pains, is prayers and masses. If the priest cele- 
brates the Mass — that is the Lord's Supper — for 
you, or some friend of yours who is dead, that 
will take off so much from your suffering after 
you get to Purgatory, or from his, now that he 
is there. Just how much one mass will amount 
to, nobody knows. That is a secret which has 
not been revealed even to the Pope himself. But 
here is the interesting part : you can't get a mass 
for yourself or your friend, unless you pay for 
it. You would suppose that such holy and benevo- 
lent men as the priests of Rome profess to be, if 
they really believed that their prayers and masses 
would relieve souls who are wallowing in awful 
agony amid the flames of Purgatory and lift them 
into the joys of Paradise, would spend their days 
and nights, all the time they could possibly spare, 
and wear their flesh down to the bone, praying 
for the unhappy dead, and not charge one cent. 
Wouldn't you, if you were a priest, and believed 
as they profess to believe ? You would be a heart- 



130 What Protestants Believe 

less wretch, if you would not. But no money, no 
masses. No cash, no prayers for the dead in 
Purgatory. Some masses cost much more than 
others. They have many different kinds of masses. 
I do not know the names of all of them, and 
I do not understand how they differ. But some 
pour more water on the flames of Purgatory than 
others, and cost more money. As was said a little 
time ago, the length of time a soul must stay in 
Purgatory and the amount of anguish he must 
suffer there, depend much more upon his earthly 
bank account than upon the kind of a life he has 
lived. There would have been small chance for 
the beggar Lazarus, if he had gone to Purga- 
tory. It was fortunate for him that Purgatory 
had not been invented in his day. There is much 
more that could be said about Purgatory. I know 
that I have described it fairly and honestly, as 
it exists in the creed of the Church of Rome. 

Protestants reject the whole scheme of Purga- 
tory. There is an intermediate state between 
death and the resurrection and, possibly, an inter- 
mediate place between earth and Heaven. It is 
probably a state of growth. But we do not be- 
lieve that it is a state of punishment. "Blessed 



What Protestants Believe 131 

are the dead who die in the Lord, from hence- 
forth." 

There are six reasons, which I will name, why 
we do not believe in the Roman Catholic Purga- 
tory. First, the whole thing is absurd and ridicu- 
lous. The idea that the payment of money and 
the saying of masses and the pretended turning 
of bread and wine to flesh and blood could re- 
lease souls from the punishment which they de- 
serve! What kind of a God would he be who 
would release a soul from merited punishment 
because his friends on earth had money to pay 
for masses, and make another soul, just as good, 
stay there for ages because his relatives on earth 
were poor ? If the Pope holds the keys of Purga- 
tory, as his followers believe, why does he not 
swing open the gates and let all the prisoners 
escape to Paradise, without money and without 
price ? He would, if he had a spark of humanity 
in his breast and believed what he professes to 
believe. 

Secondly, the doctrine of Purgatory is contrary 
to the Bible. You remember the reference which 
I quoted at the beginning of this sermon. "As 
far as the east is from the west, so far hath he 



132 What Protestants Believe 

removed our transgressions from us." Where is 
there any place for Purgatory ? "Blessed are the 
dead, who died in the Lord." "This day shalt 
thou be with me in Paradise," Jesus said to the 
robber, dying at his side. Nobody, reading noth- 
ing but the Bible, would ever dream of such a 
thing as Purgatory. There is not one clear state- 
ment of such a doctrine between the lids of this 
book. Why did not Paul and John and Peter 
say something about it in their epistles? Why 
did they not exhort the churches to raise funds 
to be spent in praying their deceased relatives out 
of torment? There are a few obscure verses in 
the Bible which the Roman theologians try to 
twist into proof texts for Purgatory. Jesus said 
that a certain sin could not be forgiven either in 
this world or in the world to come. They say 
that Jesus implied that some sins could be for- 
given in the other world. But that text is too 
small to hold Purgatory and all that goes with 
it. What Jesus said was only another way of say- 
ing that that sin could never be forgiven. Paul 
to the Corinthians tells about certain persons who 
build poor buildings on a good foundation and 
yet save their souls "so as by fire." Therefore, 



What Protestants Believe 133 

say the Romanists, some souls will escape eternal 
fire through the temporary flames of Purgatory. 
But all these passages can be rationally explained 
without Purgatory, and there is not one that can- 
not. There is one tremendous verse in the Bible 
which knocks Purgatory out of existence. "If 
we walk in the light as He (God) is in the light, 
we have fellowship one with another, and the 
blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from 
all sin." According to Rome, it is the fires of 
Purgatory that cleanse us from all sin. The blood 
cleanses from all sin ; and when the blood has ex- 
erted its cleansing power, there is nothing for 
purgatorial fires to do. 

Thirdly, Purgatory is a human invention. It 
was unknown to the early Church. The Church 
fathers, for many centuries after the death of the 
apostles, knew nothing about Purgatory. Origin, 
in 212, said: "We, after the labors and striv- 
ings of this life, hope to be in the highest heav- 
ens/ 5 Macarius, in 315, said: "When the faith- 
ful go out of their bodies the choirs of angels 
receive their souls into the proper places, to the 
pure world, and so lead them to the Lord." St. 
Athanasius, one of the greatest of the great schol- 



134 What Protestants Believe 

ars of the early Church, in the fourth century, 
said : "To the righteous it is not death, but only 
a change, for they are changed from this world 
to an eternal rest. And as a man comes out of 
prison, so do the saints go from this troublesome 
life to the good things prepared for them." They 
do not attack Purgatory by name; for they had 
never heard of a Purgatory for Christians. Pur- 
gatory was a heathen notion. After the Church 
became corrupt she borrowed Purgatory from the 
old Greeks and Romans. But it did not get into 
the creed till the tenth century. Mosheim, one of 
the very highest authorities in church history, 
says: "The clergy, finding these superstitious 
fears admirably adapted to increase their author- 
ity and promote their interest, used every method 
to augment them; and by the most pathetic dis- 
courses, accompanied by monstrous fables and 
fictitious miracles, they labored to establish the 
doctrine of Purgatory, and also to make it appear 
that they had a mighty influence in that formid- 
able region." Dollinger, a modern Roman Cath- 
olic scholar of great distinction, in 1875, at Bonn, 
at a convention of Old Catholics, said : "Purga- 
tory was an idea unknown in the East as well as 



What Protestants Believe 135 

the West till Gregory the Great introduced it." 
Gregory was Pope from 590 to 604. Purgatory 
is purely an invention of corrupt and ambitious 
and avaricious priests. 

Fourthly, Purgatory is a gloomy doctrine. 
That would not be enough to condemn it, if it 
were clearly taught in the word of God. But, in 
the absence of Scripture proof, it helps to confirm 
us in our conviction that Purgatory exists only 
in the imagination of the priests and the victims 
of their cunning. When our loved ones, who have 
lived good Christian lives, have departed in the 
faith of Jesus Christ, we comfort ourselves with 
the firm persuasion that they are beyond the reach 
of all trouble and pain and are in a state and 
place of unspeakable joy. But, in the same cir- 
cumstances, our Roman Catholic friends are com- 
pelled to believe that father or mother or husband 
or wife or child is in hellish torments, compared 
with which their worst sufferings here were posi- 
tive pleasure. And then there is the awful un- 
certainty, which not even his Holiness the Pope 
can ever remove, as to how long the anguish of 
the dear one must last. I thank God that I do 
not belong to a church which compels me to be- 



136 What Protestants Believe 

lieve that my dear departed ones, the loved and 
lost, are in the flames of Purgatory. 

Fifthly, the doctrine of Purgatory promotes 
priestly despotism. Not every priest is a tyrant 
and not every Romanist is a slave. But the temp- 
tation and the tendency are strong in that direc- 
tion. Look at the priest and his flock. He alone 
can forgive their sins. They must eat the flesh 
of Christ or die of spiritual starvation. He alone 
can change the bread into flesh. And then, by 
his prayers and masses, he can lift the souls of 
their departed loved ones out of hellish torments 
or leave them there. There is no emperor or king 
or sultan or dictator who begins to have the 
power over his subjects that the doctrine of Pur- 
gatory gives the priest of Rome over those com- 
mitted to his care. If you had been taught from 
the cradle to believe, and did believe, that your 
minister carries the keys to the underworld, into 
which you must go at death and abide for an un- 
known period of time, in unspeakable agony, 
could he not make you do anything he might 
wish? Would you not be his slave? How many 
men do you know whom you would trust with 
such power? Is not the best man in danger of 



What Protestants Believe 137 

becoming a proud, selfish and cruel tyrant, if he 
be made a Roman priest? Who could resist such 
temptations as beset the priest? No man ought 
to have such power. No man ought to be exposed 
to such temptation. We have all heard stories of 
priestly oppression, resulting from the doctrine 
of Purgatory. Father Chiniquy, in his "Fifty 
Years in the Church of Rome," relates that his 
father died when he was twelve years old, leaving 
the widow poor, with three small children. A 
few days after the funeral the priest, who was be- 
lieved to be wealthy, called upon the stricken fam- 
ily. He said to the widow : "There is something 
due for the prayers which have been sung and 
the services which you requested to be offered for 
the repose of your husband's soul. I wish you 
would pay me that little debt." She told him 
that she had no money; that her husband left 
her very poor. "But the masses offered for the 
rest of your husband's soul must be paid. Your 
husband died suddenly and without any prepara- 
tion. He is, therefore, in the flames of Purga- 
tory. If you want him to be delivered, you must 
unite your personal sacrifices with the masses 
which we offer." The widow still insisted that 



138 What Protestants Believe 

she had no money. But there was a cow, on 
whose milk the family largely depended for their 
support. The heartless priest actually took that 
cow and drove her away, while the children 
screamed with despair. The boy never forgot 
that scene. It helped to make him a Protestant, 
long after. I do not charge that the Church of 
Rome teaches or justifies such cruelty. But I do 
charge that her doctrine of Purgatory naturally 
and inevitably makes such things possible and 
frequent. That doctrine is a club, a scourge, an 
instrument of torture in the hand of every priest 
who loves money and power. The doctrine of 
Purgatory is a bloody hand on the throat of every 
faithful, loyal and sincere Romanist. If you stood 
on the margin of a river or lake in which a man 
was drowning, whom you could save, would you 
demand money of his wife and children before 
plunging in for the rescue ? The priest of Rome 
tells us that he stands on the margin of a lake 
of fire and brimstone, in which immortal souls 
are wallowing, whom he can lift out by his pray- 
ers and masses. But he will make no effort, un- 
less he is paid, cash in advance. Is not hell too 
cooJ and comfortable for such a heartless wretch ? 



What Protestants Believe 139 

Finally, the doctrine of Purgatory is the means 
of the most wicked extortion. Fkther Crowley, 
in a book which he published while he was a priest 
in good and regular standing, says: "Many 
priests deliberately preach, during the week im- 
mediately preceding All-Souls' Day, in such a 
way as unduly to work upon the feelings of their 
hearers. They picture the deceased relatives of 
their hearers as suffering most horrible torments 
in Purgatory and crying out in anguish, 'Have 
pity on me ! Have pity on me, my friends V Large 
offerings are thereupon made by the sympathetic 
relatives, amounting often to thousands of dol- 
lars, and in good conscience calling for masses, 
but the masses actually said are few and far be- 
tween." He calls this "Purgatorial Graft." He 
goes on to say : "A few years ago, in an eastern 
diocese, a pastor denounced from his pulpit the 
graft practiced upon the Catholic people in the 
name of religion by mercinary priests, and he 
called particular attention to the awful swindle 
perpetrated upon them in connection with All- 
Souls 5 Day offerings. A brother priest, who was 
a prominent pastor, struck him between the eyes 
with his fist at a public meeting of the priests of 



140 What Protestants Believe 

the diocese, held in the Cathedral Church, for 
having enlightened the people. Seeing that the 
exposure of the brave priest would interfere with 
their grafting, the priests entered into a plot to 
ruin him, and he was soon after suspended and 
deprived of his parish. He is now raising and 
selling chickens for a living." The priests extort 
enormous sums of money from the faithful by 
means of the doctrine of Purgatory. Purgatory 
is chiefly a financial institution. It is the biggest 
money-making concern ever devised by man. I 
really believe that that is the chief reason why it 
was invented. If you had a dear friend whom 
you believed to be in Purgatory, or you were on 
your death bed and expected to go to Purgatory 
in a few minutes, would you not give millions, if 
you had them, to the Father bending above your 
pillow, who should promise, if you would, to pray 
the sufferers out of the flames? Certainly you 
would. That is the way in which Rome gets her 
thousands of millions for her churches and other 
buildings and to enrich her cardinals and bishops 
and priest. Purgatory is an inexhaustible mine 
of gold. Many years ago, when there were not 
more than half as many people living on this side 



What Protestants Believe 141 

of the Atlantic as now, a noted Roman Catholic 
priest estimated that the money paid for masses 
for the dead, each year, in North America, 
amounted to ten million dollars ; and he believed 
that a large proportion of the masses paid for 
were never offered. 

We could write for hours upon this subject of 
Purgatorial Graft. Why ! they have Purgatorial 
Insurance Societies. You pay such and such pre- 
miums, and when you are dead, the Society will 
pay for the saying of a certain number of masses 
for the repose of your soul and its escape from 
the flames. The number of masses will depend 
upon how your policy reads and how much you 
pay a year. 

Who believes that the road to Heaven runs 
through Hell ? Protestantism stands for the glo- 
rious truth that the soul who trusts alone in Christ 
has perfect forgiveness. "As far as the east is 
from the west, so far" does Almighty God re- 
move "our transgression from us," if we renounce 
every evil way and believe in the atonement of 
Jesus Christ. "If we walk in the light as He 
is in the light, we have fellowship one with an- 
other, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us 
from all sin." 



142 What Protestants Believe 



I therefore instinctively sought Him of whom 
the Apostle Peter declared: "Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God/' I received 
with joy the welcome response : "Believe on the 
Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved." There and 
then I found a sure resting place. The promise 
of Jesus was verified unto me : "Come unto Me, 
and I will give you rest ;" and "He that believeth 
on the Son hath eternal life." This belief or 
faith that saves, and which I sought and found, 
is not faith in a man, or creed, or church, but in 
the divine Person, the son of God. 

Samuel McGerald, D. D. 



MINISTERS HAVE THE RIGHT, AND 
OUGHT, TO MARRY 

" * * * Ordain elders in every city 
* * * if any be blameless, the husband of one 
wife, having faithful children. * * * " — 
Titus i:5 and 6. 

These are the words of the Apostle Paul to 
his spiritual son Titus. The entire paragraph 
reads : "For this cause I left thee in Crete, that 
thou shouldest set in order the things that are 
wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had 
appointed thee, if any be blameless, the husband 
of one wife, having faithful children not accused 
of riot or unruly." Paul had traveled through 
the island of Crete, preaching the gospel, win- 
ning souls to Christ and organizing them into 
churches. Titus had been with him, helping him 
in his work. Being obliged to go to some other 
part of his immense diocese, he left Titus behind 
to complete the work of organization. One thing 
especially he commanded him to do, to ordain 
elders over the churches. The word translated 

143 



144 What Protestants Believe 

"elder" is, in the Greek, presbyter, from which 
our Roman Catholic friends make their word 
priest. They call their ministers priests. We 
call ours ministers and pastors and preachers. 
Paul mentions several qualifications which the 
minister of the gospel must have. The one to 
which I call your special attention tonight is that 
he must have a wife. Paul forbade Titus to or- 
dain any man to the ministry, no matter how well 
qualified he might be, unless he was married. 

The Roman Catholic Church has turned Paul's 
command squarely around and will not ordain 
anyone to the ministry who is married. Before 
any man can become a priest in the church of 
Rome, he must take a solemn vow that he will 
never marry. A married man may become a 
priest by casting off the woman whom he has 
promised to "love, comfort, honor and keep." 
The purpose of this chapter will be to show that 
Paul was right and that Rome is wrong; that 
what they call "celibacy" is an evil thing; that 
ministers have the right to marry, and that they 
ought to marry. 

I oppose celibacy for eight reasons. First it 
calls God a liar and curses what he blesses and 



What Protestants Believe 145 

blesses what he curses. When Adam was alone 
in the garden of Eden, God said: "It is not good 
that man should be alone ; I will make a helpmeet 
for him ;" and he created Eve and gave her to him 
to be his wife. In performing that first wedding 
ceremony, God said: "Therefore shall a man 
leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave 
unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." Jesus 
Christ repeated those words and added : "What 
God hath joined together, let no man put 
asunder." God said: "It is not good that the 
man should be alone." The minister, the priest, 
is a man. He was a man before he was a min- 
ister. If, as the All-wise declares, it is not good 
for a man to be alone, it is not good for a minister 
to be alone. There may be special cases in which 
it is necessary for a man, a minister or a layman, 
to be alone. But such cases are the exceptions 
which prove the rule. God's law for ministers, 
who are but men, is marriage. Rome hurls the 
lie into God's face and says : "It is good for the 
man to be alone; my priests shall not marry." 
The author of the book of Hebrews — probably 
Paul, certainly some one who was authorized to 
speak for God — says : "Marriage is honorable 



146 What Protestants Believe 

in all." Rome says : "Marriage is not honorable 
in all ; it is not honorable in ministers." Rome dis- 
honors marriage. She pretends to matke it a sac- 
rament and boasts that she makes it more sacred 
than Protestants do. At the same time she pro- 
nounces it an unholy and unclean thing by declar- 
ing that men and women can be more holy by 
remaining single than they possibly could be 
if they should marry. If you ask a well-informed 
Romanist why his church does not permit her 
priests to marry, he will give, as one reason, that 
a man can be more holy out of matrimony than in. 
That cannot mean anything else than that there 
is something unelean and dishonorable in mar- 
riage. Rome teaches that those who would attain 
the highest summit in religion and piety and holi- 
ness must remain single and become monks, or 
nuns or priests. If a man or woman, who is mar- 
ried, has reached a certain height in holiness, by 
prayer and church-going and deeds of charity and 
by using all the means of grace, he or she could 
have risen higher by remaining single. Accord- 
ing to Rome, marriage is a sort of necessary evil, 
a burden and drag which the Creator has imposed 
on the majority of mankind, which priests and 



What Protestants Believe 147 

monks and nuns are graciously permitted to 
shake off, that they may live in the heavenlies 
and hold constant communion with the Infinite. 
That is a vile slander on the Almighty. He says 
that "it is not good for man to be alone." He 
says that "marriage is honorable in all." It is 
not true that there is something unclean in mar- 
riage. It is not true that a man or woman can 
live a sanctified life out of matrimony better than 
in. It is not true that marriage is a necessary 
evil. The reverse of all this is true. Marriage 
is an unspeakable blessing. The true union of 
one man with one woman, and the family life 
which is based on that union, are more like 
Heaven than anything else on this earth. Mar- 
riage is not a hindrance to living a holy life ; it is 
a very great help. The unholy are not the married. 
More often the unholy are those who have rashly 
sworn that they will not marry. I want to cast 
the lie back into the teeth of Rome and say to her : 
"Begone with your enforced celibacy. This is not 
the first way, or the last, in which you make the 
word of God of none effect through your 
tradition." 



148 What Protestants Believe 

The second objection to the Roman Catholic 
law of celibacy is that it is contrary to nature. 
The allwise Creator has divided the human family 
into two sexes, almost equal in number. Each 
sex is incomplete without the other. There is a 
mighty instinctive tendency in the two to come to- 
gether and become one. Each sex seeks the so- 
ciety of the other with a mutual attraction which 
it is almost impossible to resist. No fence was 
ever built high enough, no ditch was ever dug 
deep enough, to keep the sexes apart. They will 
come together, either in honorable, heaven-blessed 
wedlock, or as the wild cattle do in the fields. It 
is nature's plan that every man shall have one 
wife, and every woman shall have one husband. 
Man is but half a; man without woman, and 
woman is but half a woman without man. To 
both man and woman a single life is forever an 
incomplete life. There is something lacking 
which can never be made up. Man is a hemi- 
sphere. Woman is a hemisphere. The life of 
each is but half a life. When fittingly joined to- 
gether, they make one well-rounded sphere — one 
perfect life. Longfellow says : 



What Protestants Believe 149 

"As unto the bow the cord is, 
So unto the man is woman. 
Though she bends him, she obeys him, 
Though she draws him, yet she follows, 
Useless each without the other \" 

Martin Luther said: "It is almost as impossible 
to dispense with female society as it is to live with- 
out eating or drinking. The image of marriage 
is found in all creatures, not only in the animals 
of the earth, the air and the water, but also in 
trees and stones. Everyone knows there are trees, 
such as the apple and the pear, which are like hus- 
band and wife, and which prosper better when 
planted together. Among stones the same thing 
may be remarked, especially in precious stones — 
the coral, the emerald and others. The Heaven is 
husband to the earth ; he vivifies her by the heat 
of the sun, by the rain and the wind, and causes 
her to bear all sorts of plants and fruits/' But 
what becomes of all these beautiful words and 
these solid truths, in the face of Rome's decree 
that her priests shall never marry? There are 
unfortunate circumstances which sometimes com- 
pel men and women to go through life unmarried. 
When this is so, the affliction is to be endured like 



150 What Protestants Believe 

other calamities. But to compel a hundred thou- 
sand lusty young men, and millions before and 
millions after, to swear that they will never marry 
is a crime against nature and nature's God; and 
the results cannot be anything but evil. 

The third objection against the Roman law of 
priestly celibacy is that a minister needs a wife 
more than almost any other man. Every man 
needs a wife. No man, in any calling or profes- 
sion or occupation, can do his best, unless he has 
a true woman by his side, or in the sacred shelter 
of his home, to praise and criticize and counsel 
and inspire. That is the plan on which humanity 
was made. The greatest and most successful men 
owe much of their greatness and success to their 
other, and better, self. The great Napoleon be- 
gan to fall the moment he put away his Josephine, 
the wife of his youth. Her love had been his in- 
spiration. Her counsel had been his safest guide. 
What is true of men in general is doubly and 
trebly true of the minister, the pastor of a Chris- 
tian church. The statesman, the general, the 
lawyer, the physician, the artizan, the farmer 
needs a wife far less than the pastor. How sense- 
less for the Church of Rome to forbid her pastors 



What Protestants Believe 151 

to marry ! There are several reasons why a pas- 
tor is in special need of a wife. If he be a sincere 
and conscientious man, he has burdens to bear 
which might crush an angel. How greatly he 
needs the refuge and rest of home in the intervals 
of his most strenuous toil. But there is no real 
home where there is no wife, or where there has 
been none. She may have taken her flight to the 
Heavenly world. But the fragrance of her life 
remains, and the children linger, and the home 
still stands. A pastor can endure almost any- 
thing if he has a home, to which he can flee and 
a wife, in whose love and sympathy and counsel 
he can confide. God pity the pastor who is alone ! 
Every wifeless man is alone, no matter how many 
hundreds of true friends he may have. A pastor 
needs a wife to act as critic for him. There is 
hardly anything a minister needs more than just 
and loving criticism. He has two kinds of critics 
— those who admire him and can see nothing in 
his preaching or himself to blame, and those who 
do not like him and can see nothing to praise. 
Between the two, he gets no real criticism at all, 
and so becomes confirmed in faults which seri- 
ously mar his work. But a good and sensible wife 



152 What Protestants Believe 

may be a most excellent critic. She dares to tell 
him his faults and her criticism is inspired by 
love. Left to himself, he gathers a hundred lit- 
tle ridiculous blemishes, which hinder his useful- 
ness as the barnacles on a ship hinder its prog- 
ress. But a good wife may scrape them all off 
before they are fixed. A pastor's work is largely 
among the women of his flock. He therefore 
needs a wife through whom he may the better 
approach the sisters, who will often be his spokes- 
man and who will always be a shield to his repu- 
tation and his character. A minister, with a wife, 
can go to many places and put himself into many 
situations where a single man ought never to 
be found. A pastor needs advice which no one 
on earth can give him but a wife. Some pastors 
have made grievous and incurable blunders which 
they would not have made had there been a wife 
at hand, armed with sanctified common sense. A 
pastor can be a better shepherd to the families of 
his church, if he is a family man himself, with 
wife and children. How can an old bachelor 
come into a home and give advice? There is a 
vast amount of good work which a minister's 
wife can do, in the church and in the community, 



What Protestants Believe 153 

which no one else can do as well. I believe there 
is no place of usefulness for a woman as great as 
that of a pastor's wife. A woman of the right 
sort, wedded to a minister, may double, may mul- 
tiply his power for good many times. I have 
known many instances where that was the fact. 
The church which is blessed with a good pastor 
who has a good wife has the equivalent of two 
pastors. A pastor who has a good wife is twice 
a man, where an old bachelor of the same ability 
and devotion would be only half a man. All ex- 
perienced ministers would tell you that. And all 
churches want married men for pastors, and will 
not willingly accept old bachelors. Old maids are 
respectable. Usually they are not to blame for 
being single. Old bachelors are usually abomin- 
able. They might get married, if they would. 
In no place is an old bachelor so much out of place 
as in the pastorate of a church. If Rome is seek- 
ing the good of her people and the glory of God, 
she has made an awful blunder in decreeing that 
her ministers must all be unmarried. 

The fourth objection to ministerial celibacy is 
that it is contradicted by Old Testament example. 
All the Old Testament worthies and saints were 



154 What Protestants Believe 

married, so far as we are informed. Of the heroes 
of faith, whose names are inscribed on God's 
honor roll in the Eleventh chapter of Hebrews, 
we know that every one was married, except Abel 
and Barak. Abel was murdered in his youth and 
we do not know about the other. There is not a 
man among all God's prophets and priests whom 
we know to have been an old bachelor. There 
was Noah, who built the ark and preached right- 
eousness for one hundred and twenty years. Why 
did not God command him not to marry ? There 
was Abraham, whose name is honored today by 
more millions than that of any other man who 
ever lived, by Christians and Jews and Moham- 
medans. He was a married man. There was 
Joseph. He is, perhaps, the purest character in 
all the Bible, next to Jesus Christ. He had a wife. 
If, as Rome says, an unmarried life is purer than 
a married life, I wonder that such a clean man as 
Joseph was did not remain single. There was 
Moses. Everybody considers him one of the 
greatest and best men that ever lived. He was 
married. Who believes that he would have been 
a greater and better man, if he had been an old 
bachelor? According to Rome, he would have 



What Protestants Believe 155 

been. Human nature has not changed. If a man 
can be a better minister of the Lord Jesus by re- 
maining single, Moses could have served God 
and Israel and mankind better by staying in the 
state of single blessedness. Samuel, one of the 
very greatest of the prophets, was a married man. 
So were Isaiah and Ezekiel and Hosea. God had 
an ancient priesthood. He established it among 
the children of Israel. The Roman Catholic 
Church has copied many of its features in her 
priesthood. ■ The Jewish priests were married 
men. God gave them directions as to whom they 
should marry. If it is better that a priest should 
be single, why did not God know, and command 
his priests to be bachelors? Old Testament 
abounds in commands to be holy and rules about 
being holy. If celibacy is a cleaner state than 
matrimony, how strange that a holy and all wise 
God did not command his holy prophets and 
priests to remain unmarried! He instituted a 
class of very holy men called Nazarites. They 
were forbidden to touch any intoxicating drink. 
If Rome is right, I wonder that they were not 
forbidden to marry. Can you explain God's 
mistake ? 



156 What Protestants Believe 

The fifth objection to ministerial celibacy is that 
the apostles were married men. St. Ambrosius, 
of the Church of Rome, says that all of the apos- 
tles were married except Paul and John. 
Many scholars think Paul had a wife. We know 
that he said he had a right to have a wife and 
to take her around with him on his preaching 
trips. We know that Peter, who, according to 
Rome, was the first Pope, was a married man. 
That fact is a cruel blow, aimed right at the 
head of Rome. Nothing can be said against the 
Roman Catholic Church and religion half so un- 
kind as this fact, which they all admit, that their 
first Pope had a wife. How do they get along 
with Mrs. Peter ? They say that when her hus- 
band became a priest he put her away. The 
Roman Church professes great respect for the 
sacrament of matrimony and will not permit di- 
vorce for any cause. And yet she declares that 
her first infallible pope abandoned his innocent 
wife to the cold charities of an unfriendly world. 
I think Peter would have shown himself to be a 
better Christian, if he had stuck to his wife and 
his fishing and left the business of being pope to 
some old bachelor. But old bachelors were very 



What Protestants Believe 157 

scarce in those days before holy men found out 
that they could be more holy out of matrimony 
than in. But how does Rome know that Peter put 
away his wife. She does not know it. There is 
absolutely no proof for that assertion. He had 
not put her away when Paul wrote his first letter 
to the Corinthians ; for he says in that letter that 
Peter's wife was traveling about with her hus- 
band. 

The sixth objection to Roman Catholic celibacy 
is that it is opposed to the direct and positive com- 
mand of God. Listen again please: "Ordain 
elders in every city, if any be blameless, the hus- 
band of one wife, having faithful children." This 
text not only permits ministers to marry; but it 
commands them to. In his first letter to Timothy 
Paul says : "A bishop must be blameless, the hus- 
band of one wife." He also says : "Let the dea- 
cons" (Rome like us considers the deaconate one 
of the orders of the Christian ministry) "be the 
husbands of one wife." How can the doctrine of 
priestly celibacy stand one moment in the face of 
these positive commands of God? It could not, 
if Rome cared anything for the Holy Scriptures. 
She hates the Bible. She withholds it from her 



158 What Protestants Believe 

people. She has murdered hundreds of thousands 
who would read it for themselves. She fears the 
truth. She shuns the light. 

The seventh objection to priestly celibacy is 
that it Is a human invention. At the beginning of 
the Christian church, and for centuries after, 
ministers had wives like other men. It is so 
today in the Greek Church, which is older than 
the Roman Church. The Greek Church, with its 
ninety million members, not only permits, but re- 
quires, all its priests to marry before they are 
ordained. It makes an exception only of its bish- 
ops. For some reason, they must be single men. 
Roman Catholic celibacy had its origin in super- 
stition and papal ambition. Quite early the silly 
notion sprung up that a single life is more holy 
than a married life. During the dark ages this 
spread. At length a pope adopted the theory and 
undertook to force it upon the priesthood. A 
fierce battle began, which raged for many cen- 
turies. The popes saw, if the priests had no 
wives and no family ties, they would be bound 
more firmly to the church and would be the blind 
and pliant tools of papal despotism. The war 
against nature and reason and divine law lasted 



What Protestants Believe 159 

six hundred years. Little by little the popes 
forced the bitter drug down the throat of the 
unwilling priesthood. At last Pope Hildebrand, 
Gregory VII, a man of iron will and great ability, 
succeeded, in 1073, in getting a decree proclaimed 
that none but unmarried men should officiate at the 
altars of the Roman Church. That is the law to- 
day. But many of the best and ablest men in the 
Roman priesthood hate it and cry out against it 
as much as they dare. I have in my possession a 
recent book written by an American priest, in 
good and regular standing, who uses these words : 
"In no other matter has Rome shown a more bru- 
tal despotism and a more wicked superstition than 
in regard to clerical celibacy. Efforts have been 
made by both priesthood and laity, from the days 
of Hildebrand to our own, to mitigate the present 
discipline of celibacy; but, as in all other move- 
ments towards a more spiritual religion and a 
more rational rule, Rome has uttered its anath- 
ema, and loaded the reformer with foul insinu- 
ation and public disgrace." 

The last, and strongest objection to priestly 
celibacy is that it strongly tends toward vice and 
licentiousness. This is the truth which I desire 



160 What Protestants Believe 

to fix in your thought: the unmarried minister is 
much less likely to be pure than the minister who 
has a wife. This is an extremely delicate subject, 
and I must tread very cautiously. There is a piti 
of slime and most disgusting filth right before us, 
which I must not uncover; I can only lift the lid 
a very little. 

Permit me, in the cleanest language I can use, 
present for your reflection a few facts and sug- 
gestions. Suppose marriage were universally 
abolished. Suppose there were a law, enacted and 
enforced in every state and nation, that no man, 
minister or layman, shall have a wife. Would 
that promote virtue or vice? Everybody would 
say: "It would promote universal corruption. A 
few would be virtuous. But the great mass would 
cohabit like the cattle and the swine. You cannot 
keep the sexes wholly apart. Marriage — one 
man with one woman — with its occasional infe- 
licities^ is infinitely better than indiscriminate as- 
sociation." Well, here are a hundred thousand 
priests. They are but men. They are, for the 
most part, strong, vigorous, virile, well-fed men, 
never worn down to the bone by severe physical 
toil. In which state will they be most likely to be 



What Protestants Believe 161 

pure and holy, bound by legal, public marriage, 
each to the woman of his love, or exposed to all 
the allurements of the flesh, without wife or 
home? There can be but one answer. If mar- 
riage means purity for the mass of men, it means 
purity for the ministers of religion. St. Paul says : 
"To avoid fornication, let every man have his 
own wife and let every woman have her own 
husband/' Bernard, a famous Roman Catholic 
saint, said: "Take away honorable wedlock and 
you will fill the church with fornication, incest, 
sodomy and all pollution/' D. Marco Petrono, 
an Italian priest, says: "The boasted chastity of 
the priesthood has filled the church with demons 
in place of angels, who lead their flocks to ruin 
by their acts and example/' 

There is a special reason why the ministers of 
the Roman Church should be married. They are 
brought into much more intimate relations with 
women than Protestant ministers are. In the con- 
fessional they are required to converse with 
women of all ages upon the most delicate matters 
and in the closest secrecy. In conversation and 
thought the priest and the woman come nearer 
to each other than human beings ever do, in any- 



162 What Protestants Believe 

where else. How much safer for both parties that 
the father confessor be bound to a wife whom he 
loves with a pure affection ! 

As a matter of fact celibacy does not produce 
purity, and it was not intended to, by the men 
by whom it was invented. The best and most 
loyal Roman Catholic historians record that many 
popes and cardinals and bishops along the cen- 
turies, have had children, if they have not had 
wives. In the estimation of Rome, for a priest 
to be a father is a much smaller sin than to be a 
husband. It is a notorious fact that Cardinal An- 
tonelli, the prime minister and bosom friend of 
Pope Pius IX., was sued by his daughter, the 
Countess Lambertini, for her share of the pa- 
ternal estate. It caused a great scandal at the 
time. But the Holy Father, who considered it a 
sin for a priest to marry, retained his licentious 
counselor. Father J. J. Crowley says : 'Tope Leo 
XIII. was the father of several children, one of 
them being the eminent Cardinal Satolli, a man 
of conspicuous immorality." St. Ligouri, the au- 
thor of the book entitled : 'The Glories of Mary," 
from which I quoted in a former chapter, says: 
"We must not rebuke the penitent priest, who falls 



What Protestants Believe 163 

into the sin of unchastity once a month." The 
popes, who condemn marriage among ministers, 
expect that they will violate the Seventh Com- 
mandment; for they have legislated on the sub- 
ject, not to forbid the sin, but to provide for the 
results. Pope Pius V. made a law that no clergy- 
man should leave anything by will to his illegiti- 
mate children. 

Doctor Butler, who has been Superintendent 
of the missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
in Mexico for very many years, told the Method- 
ist ministers of Buffalo, in my hearing, that it is 
the common and usual thing in that country for 
the parish priests to live openly with concubines 
and families of children. Is that better than law- 
ful marriage? Rome says, "Yes." 

Father Jeremiah J. Crowley, of Chicago, in a 
recent book, published while he was a Roman 
Catholic priest in good and regular standing, and 
had no thought of becoming a Protestant, tells 
the most dreadful stories of the licentiousness of 
very many of the priests of the diocese of Chi- 
cago. When the facts were laid before the bishop 
with all the evidence, he gave them no attention, 
unless to reward and promote the guilty ones. 



164 What Protestants Believe 

There is abundant evidence, from nuns who 
have escaped from what they call "hell" and from 
converted priests, that the nunneries generally, 
to all of which the priests have free access, are 
places of awful sin and loathsome debauchery. 
It is not a pleasure to say this ; but it ought to be 
known. Particulars can not be given here. But 
they have been given by the hundred with cir- 
cumstances and proofs which would convince 
every unprejudiced investigator. They certainly 
have convinced the writer. 

All things go to show that priestly celibacy 
tends to vice and corruption, and not to virtue 
and holiness. Father Crowley says: "Priestly 
celibacy and auricular confession ever have been, 
and are now, prolific sources of crime and licen- 
tiousness." Let us close this malodorous discus- 
sion with the words of St. Paul. Writing to Tim- 
othy concerning the "latter times," he says that 
"some will depart from the faith, giving heed to 
seducing spirits and doctrines of devils." Then 
he names one of those "doctrines of devils." It is 
this "Forbidding to marry." If the law of the 
Roman Catholic Church that ministers shall bind 
themselves with a horrid oath that they will never 



What Protestants Believe 165 

marry is not a "doctrine of devils/ 5 what can it be ? 
Is not this exactly what the Holy Ghost had in 
mind when he inspired Paul to write those 
words? 



166 What Protestants Believe 



The priests in the confessional stretches forth 
his right hand towards the penitent and says, 
"Our Lord Jesus Christ absolve thee, and I, by 
His authority, absolve thee from all thy sins, in 
the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the 
Holy Ghost. Amen/' "May the passion of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, the merits of the Blessed Vir- 
gin Mary, and of the saints, and whatsoever good 
thou shalt do, or whatsoever evil thou shalt suffer, 
be to thee unto the remission of thy sins, the 
increase of grace, and the recompense of everlast- 
ing life. Amen." Notwithstanding all this the 
sincere Roman worshipper has no assurance of 
pardon nor a personal consciousness of sins 
forgiven. 

Samuel McGerald, D. D. 



JESUITISM— THE SOUL OF ROMANISM 

"They speak not peace: but devise deceitful 
matters against them that are quiet in the land." 
Psalm xxxv : 20. 

The Great Reformation, from which our mod- 
ern civilization has sprung, began, in England, 
with Wycliffe, in 1375; in France, with Lefevre, 
in 1 5 12; and in Germany with Luther, in 15 17. 
Three great universities, Oxford, Paris and Wit- 
temburg, saw the first faint glimmer of day, after 
a thousand years of midnight darkness. By the 
end of the first quarter of the sixteenth century 
the Reformation had advanced so far, and was 
moving so rapidly, that all appearances indicated 
that the Church of Rome would wholly pass 
away. She had lost England, Scotland, Denmark, 
Sweden, Livonia, Prussia, Saxony, Hesse, Wur- 
temburg, the Palitinate, the Northern Nether- 
lands and several cantons of Switzerland ; and all 
other countries on the northern side of the Alps 
and Pyrenees were slipping out of her palsied 
hands. In France, Belgium, Southern Germany, 

167 



168 What Protestants Believe 

Hungary and Poland the contest was undecided ; 
but the Protestants were numerous, powerful, 
bold and active, while the governments were giv- 
ing no aid to the frightened Papacy. In Poland 
while the king was still a Papist, the Protestants 
had the upper hand in the Diet and had taken pos- 
session of the parish churches. The Papal nuncio 
wrote to his master : "In this kingdom it looks as 
though Protestantism would completely supersede 
Catholicism/ 5 In Bavaria the Protestants had a 
majority in the Assembly of the States. In Tran- 
sylvania the house of Austria was powerless to 
prevent the Diet from confiscating, at one stroke, 
all the estates of the Church. In Austria proper 
it was commonly said that only one thirteenth of 
the population could be called good Catholics. In 
Belgium the Protestants were reckoned by hun- 
dreds of thousands. Even in Spain and Italy the 
reformed doctrines were gaining adherents by the 
thousands among the most influential classes. 
The Prophecy of the book of Revelation seemed 
to be having its fulfillment. "The kings of the 
earth shall hate the whore, and shall make her 
desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and 
burn her with fire." 



What Protestants Believe 169 

While Rome was bleeding to death from the 
wounds inflicted upon her from without, she was 
dying from a cancer within her very vitals. She 
was rotten to the core. Her monks were the 
laughing-stock of the world. It was commonly 
believed that her priests and abbots and bishops 
were almost universally licentious and vile; and 
they were regarded with loathing and contempt. 
"Viler than a priest" was a very common proverb. 
The Papacy had lost the respect of all classes, 
while its annals were black with debauchery, in- 
cest and murder. The whole system of Romanism 
was on the point of falling to pieces from sheer 
putrifaction. 

But there came a change. When the billows of 
the Reformation seemed about to roll over all 
Europe, there was a sudden recoil. To return 
to our figure — the blood flowing from the wounds 
of the Papacy was stopped. Her running sores 
were partially healed. Her cancerous growths 
were checked. Life came back to her emaciated 
frame. She put on fresh garments. She re- 
sumed her activities. And today she survives, in 
great strength, after a new and wonderful career 
of nearly four hundred years. The story of this 



170 What Protestants Believe 

reaction and recuperation is one of the most mar- 
velous chapters in the history of our race. It is 
all traceable to one man. 

When Rome seemed almost at her last gasp, an 
obscure Spanish soldier, lying in bed from wounds 
received in a battle with the French, discovered a 
remedy which saved her life. Whether it was 
man's wit, or Satan's cunning, that devised the 
cure, no mortal can tell. The wonder-worker's 
name was Ignatius Loyola. We have his life, 
written by Rabandenira, one of his followers and 
his intimate friend, and by many other admirers. 
He was the youngest son of a Spanish nobleman. 
He was born one year before the discovery of 
America. He grew to manhood with only the 
barest rudiments of book knowledge. He was 
wild and dissipated, though strictly trained in the 
Roman religion. For a little while he was a page 
in the court of King Ferdinand. Being very am- 
bitious, he entered the army, determined to win 
a great name for himself. At the age of thirty he 
was wounded by a cannon ball, in both legs, at 
the siege of Pampeluna. Falling into the hands 
of the French, they kindly sent him to his father's 
castle, where he lay a long time in extreme suffer- 



What Protestants Believe 171 

ing of body and anguish of mind. Realizing that 
his crippled condition would forever spoil him for 
a soldier, and that his wounds had disfigured his 
person so that he could no longer shine in the gay- 
festivities of the royal court, he racked his brain 
to think of some other way to satisfy his ambition. 
"What can I do to make myself great and power- 
ful and famous ?" he asked himself. Power, fame 
were what he wanted. He thought only of self 
and self-exaltation. Having nothing else to read, 
he read "The Lives of the Saints." That made 
him think of religion, not of religion as that which 
would make him pure in heart and acceptable to 
a holy God, but as some thing by which he might 
attain worldly grandeur and glory. He could not 
fight again in the war between his country and 
France. But he could take part in the war be- 
tween Catholicism and Protestantism. He could 
enlist in the army of the Lord to kill heretics and 
destroy heresy. He knew that Protestantism was 
gaining everywhere, and that the "true Church" 
and "true religion" were everywhere growing 
weaker and weaker. He said to himself : "I will 
found a new order of monks for the purpose of 
destroying heresy. I will be the head of the 



172 What Protestants Believe 

order. I will destroy Protestantism and make 
myself the most famous man in the world. Saint 
Peter founded the Church of Rome. Saint Igna- 
tius shall be famous, through all coming ages, as 
the restorer of the Church." A bolder and more 
daring scheme of worldly ambition was never 
born in a human mind. He believed it would suc- 
ceed. Probably he had a superstitious faith that 
the Almighty would make it succeed. But before 
he could found a monastic order he must become a 
saint, or make the world believe that he was a saint. 
A saint with the Romanists is not one who lives 
a holy life ; but one who starves and scourges and 
torments his body, and performs wonders, and 
wins glory for the Church and himself. He would 
be such a saint as that. That kind of sainthood 
seems much easier and more attractive to the de- 
praved heart of man than the real sainthood 
taught in the Word of God. 

When his strength was sufficiently restored 
Ignatius set himself to the task of working out 
his scheme. He began with a pilgrimage to the 
convent of Mont ser rat, a jagged mountain in 
Catalonia, believed to have been torn and shattered 
by the earthquake which took place at the moment 



What Protestants Believe 173 

when the Saviour expired upon the cross. Thither 
came pilgrims, from all parts of the Catholic 
world to worship a miraculous picture of the Vir- 
gin Mary. There, during three successive days, 
Ignatius made a general confession of all the sins 
of his life and took the vow of perpetual chas- 
tity, giving up a sweetheart for whom he had an 
ardent affection. Hanging up his sword as a 
votive offering before the holy picture, he took 
the road, barefoot, to Manresa, a small town 
twelve miles from Montserrat, where the Domini- 
cans had a hospital for the relief of pilgrims. 
There he offered himself for the service of the 
poor and sick. Near by was a cave so horrible 
that no one had ever dared to enter. Into this 
vile den he crept, and there he remained till he 
was so nearly dead that, when he crawled out, he 
had to be carried to the hospital. His life in the 
cave gave him the name of saint, and, while there, 
he is said to have been favored with visions of the 
Saviour and the Holy Virgin. While in the hos- 
pital of Manresa, Ignatius made the first draft of 
his famous book, Exercitia Spiritualia, in which 
he claimed to have had divine assistance. This 
work has always been the chief text-book of 



174 What Protestants Believe 

Jesuitism, and has contributed more than any 
other to the erection of the new papal theocracy 
and to the promulgation of the dogma of papal 
infallibility. A single quotation will show the 
general character of the work. "We ought ever 
to hold it as a fixed principle that what I see 
white, I believe to be black, if the Hierarchical 
Church so define it" 

From Manresa Ignatius went to Rome. Having 
received the papal benediction from Adrian VL, 
he set out as a beggar to Venice, and thence em- 
barked for Cyprus and the Holy Land. This pil- 
grimage lasted about half a year. He returned 
to Spain with the conviction that he must have 
a literary education before he could carry out his 
grand scheme of conquering the world for him- 
self and the pope. Although he was thirty-three 
years old, he entered a grammar school at Barce- 
lona. After two years of hard study there, he 
went, with three disciples whom he had gained at 
Barcelona, to the university of Alcala. Thence he 
went to the university of Salamanca. At the age 
of thirty-seven he entered the university of Paris, 
where he studied seven years and received the de- 
gree of doctor of philosophy. In Paris Ignatius 



What Protestants Believe 175 

gathered around him the first members of the new 
order which he intended to found. The charter 
members beside Ignatius, were Lefevre from 
Savoy, Francis Xavier from Navarre, three Span- 
iards, Jacob Lainez, Nicolaus Boabdilla and Al- 
fonso Salmeron, and one Portuguese, Simon 
Roderiguez. On the summit of Monmarte, on a 
starlit night, August 15, 1534, after receiving the 
communion in the abbey church on the heights, 
these seven young men took vows of poverty, 
chastity and obedience and became 'The Society 
of Jesus." They do not seem to have had much 
of a constitution at the first; but they took for 
a motto, "Ad majorem Dei gloriam," 'Tor the 
greater glory of God." That, with* "Semper 
Idem," "Always the Same," has ever since been 
the slogan of the most wonderful merely human 
organization the world has ever seen. 

The next thing which had to be done was to 
secure the sanction of the pope. The Society of 
Jesus could not be a monastic order till the Head 
of the Church should speak the word. Accord- 
ingly the seven young men repaired to Rome. 
They anticipated much opposition and were not 
disappointed. There seemed to be monkish orders 



176 What Protestants Believe 

enough already and the existing orders tried to 
make the pope believe that no new one was 
needed. Ignatius obtained an audience with his 
holiness. He showed him the Constitution which 
he had drawn up and perfected. He told the 
pope that he would "reform the monastic orders 
and reanimate the priesthood with holy fervor." 
He said: "The society which I would found is 
absolutely necessary for the eradication of those 
abuses with which the Church is afflicted." He 
described the dreadful condition of the Church in 
many lands, and declared that it was due to the 
shortcomings of the priesthood abandoned to the 
gratification of their own passions. "For ex- 
ample," he said, "there is a city in Germany, 
Worms, where there is only one priest worthy of 
respect." The substance of his argument was: 
"Nothing can save the Church from utter de- 
struction but my society." The pope took the 
constitution and submitted it to a committee of 
cardinals for examination. They objected to the 
clause which pledged all the members to "im- 
plicit and unquestioning obedience to the General 
of the order." Ignatius consented to an amend- 
ment, whereby every member should also take a 



What Protestants Believe 177 

vow "of obedience to the Holy See and to the pope 
pro tempore, with the express obligation of going, 
without remuneration, to whatsoever part of the 
world the pope should please to send them." Af- 
ter deliberating about two years, Pope Paul III., 
on September 2J, 1546, issued the bull "Regimini 
Militantis Ecclesiae," establishing the Society of 
Jesus as a legitimate order in the Holy Catholic 
Church. 

Ignatius, with seeming reluctance, accepted the 
office of General of the order. The society grew 
with marvelous rapidity. The zealous, devout 
and enegetic of all ranks in the Roman Church 
offered themselves as members. They spread into 
all lands. They became the confessors of kings, 
the teachers of youth, the most popular preachers 
and the most successful missionaries. In ten years 
Loyola's society had gained the confidence and 
affection of all Catholic Europe, in spite of the 
jealousy of other orders, the fears of kings and 
the opposition of universities. Loyola was the 
most powerful man in the world. He swayed the 
councils of the Vatican; he moved the minds of 
monarchs ; his followers filled the most important 
chairs in all the universities ; his eighty thousand 



178 What Protestants Believe 

eyes were fastened upon every court and camp 
and family; his eighty thousand hands were in 
the affairs of every state; his influence was the 
prop of every absolute throne and the only hope 
of the spiritual despotism of Rome. The sudden 
growth and enormous power of the Society of 
Jesus impress us with wonder and awe; and we 
are almost, if not quite, ready to attribute them to 
the cunning and might of the Prince of the empire 
of Hell. Is there not a superhuman element in 
Jesuitism ? 

After serving as General of his order for fifteen 
years, Ignatius Loyola died, worn out by exces- 
sive labor, in the year 1556, in the city of Rome, 
and was buried in the Church of Jesus, one of the 
richest and most gorgeous in that city of splendid 
churches. It is located about midway between 
the Capitol and the Pantheon. Annexed to the 
church is an immense building, erected to be the 
headquarters of the Jesuits and the home of the 
General. Here the body of Ignatius is preserved 
in a splendid urn of gilt bronze, incrusted with 
gold and precious stones. He was solemnly can- 
onized as a saint by Gregory XV., in 1623. He 
was certainly a most remarkable man. It cannot 



What Protestants Believe 179 

be doubted that he was possessed of great intel- 
lectual gifts. His followers assert that he was 
divinely inspired and was endowed with miracle- 
working power, even to the extent of raising the 
dead. 

The Constitution of the Jesuits was locked up 
in the secret archives of the Society for more 
than two hundred years. Its contents were un- 
known to most of the members of the organiza- 
tion. In 1760, a suit against the order for the re- 
covery of a sum of money being prosecuted in 
Paris, the court demanded and obtained a copy of 
the Constitution, and it was published to the 
world. The Jesuits form a secret, oath-bound 
society. It consists of four degrees. The members 
of the first degree are called the Novices. They 
are under very severe training for two years. If 
then they are found capable of giving up all indi- 
viduality and all independence of intellect, and are 
in all respects acceptable to their superiors, they 
are advanced to the degree of Scholastics. The 
Scholastics undergo a long and severe training in 
theology, philosophy, philology and science, and, 
if found worthy, are advanced to the degree of 
Coadjutors. Six years at least are required to 



180 What Protestants Believe 

pass through the second degree, and the candidate 
must be thirty-two years old. Most of the Coad- 
jutors are ordained as priests on entering that 
degree; but a few remain laymen for menial 
services. After remaining in the third degree for 
ten or more years, the worthy members take their 
final vows and are enrolled among the Professed. 
Only the Professed possess the full rights of mem- 
bers. They alone have the right to vote in the 
Provincial Congregation. The Jesuits have 
divided the world into provinces. The Professed 
of a province meet in a congregation and elect 
two deputies. The deputies of all the provinces 
meet in general congregation and elect a General 
of the Order, who serves until death. The Gen- 
eral Congregation may depose a General; but it 
never has. 

The General is a monarch of the most abso- 
lute kind. His word is law to every member of 
the Society. Every Jesuit is under the most solemn 
and awful oath to obey the General in all things, 
without any hesitation or questioning. Nicolini, 
an Italian Roman Catholic, in "History of the 
Jesuits," says : "The member of the Society must 
regard the General as Christ the Lord, and must 



What Protestants Believe 181 

strive to acquire perfect resignation and denial of 
his own will and judgment to that which the Gen- 
eral wills and judges, just as if he were a corpse, 
which allows itself to be moved and led in any 
direction/' The Jesuit Bartoldi says, in his his- 
tory; 'The meaning of the Constitution is entire 
abnegation of our own will and judgment." Again 
he says, "What can be more complete than our 
submission to the orders of our superiors in every- 
thing? This submission to the will and judg- 
ment of the superior, or General, is called 're- 
nouncing our own judgment/ 'the annihilation 
of self/ " Bartoldi repeats one of the oaths of the 
society in which the candidate for advancement 
swears: "I will regard myself as a dead body, 
without will or intelligence, as a little crucifix 
which is turned about unresistingly at the will of 
him who holds it, as a staff in the hands of an old 
man, who uses it as he requires and as it suits 
him best/' Bartoldi says: "To believe that a 
thing ought to be because the General orders it, 
is the last and most perfect degree. We cannot 
arrive at this degree without recognizing in the 
person of our General, be he wise or imprudent, 
holy or imperfect, the authority of Jesus Christ 



182 What Protestants Believe 

himself, whom he represents." Once more he 
says: "If it seems to me that the superior has 
ordered me to do something against my con- 
science, or in which there appears to be something 
sinful, if he is of the contrary opinion, I should 
rely upon him. I must no longer belong to myself, 
but to my Creator, and to those who govern in his 
name, and in whose hands I should be as soft as 
wax, whatsoever he chooses to require of me." 

Jesuitism makes the members of the order 
slaves in the most absolute meaning of the word 
— slaves to the General. They are a secret police, 
drilled to obey the General absolutely. If the 
General commands anything which a member be- 
lieves to be sinful, he is bound by his oath to obey, 
notwithstanding. This has been denied by Jesuits 
in recent times and by some weak-kneed Protest- 
ant apologists. But, according to Nicolini, the 
Constitution reads: "No constitution, declara- 
tion, or any order of living can involve an obliga- 
tion to commit sin, mortal or venial, unless the Gen- 
eral commands it in the name of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, or in virtue of holy obedience, which shall 
be done in those cases or persons wherein it shall 
be judged that it will greatly conduce to the par- 



What Protestants Believe 183 

ticular good of each, that the greater glory and 
praise of Christ, our Creator and Lord, may fol- 
low." Listen to the quotation from the Constitu- 
tion, whose, authenticity no one can deny : "Visum 
est nobis nullas constitutions, declarationes vel 
ordinem ullam vivendi posse obligationem ad pec- 
catum inducere, nisi Superior et juberet." This 
can be translated only one way : "It is evident to 
us that no constitutions, declarations or any order 
of living can impose any obligation to sin, unless 
the Superior should command it." The Jesuits are 
convicted out of their own mouth, of putting 
obedience to their General above obedience to 
God, or even to the Pope. 

Nor is this all. As Nicolini says : "After having 
thus transferred the allegiance of the Jesuit from 
his God to his General, the Constitution proceeds 
to secure the allegiance from all conflict with the 
natural affections or wordly interests." Jesuitism 
does not allow its slave any affections of the heart 
or earthly interests whatever. He cannot own a 
cent of property. He cannot have a country ; all 
nations must be alike to him. He cannot attach 
himself to any spot on this round globe. He can- 
not set his affections on any human being outside 



184 What Protestants Believe 

of his order, or even within. He must live and 
move and have his being only for his order and as 
his General commands. As Nicolini says, "No 
one but the General can exercise the right of ut- 
tering a single original thought or opinion/' Then 
he adds : "It is almost impossible to conceive the 
power, especially in former times, of a General 
having at his absolute disposal such an amount 
of intelligence, wills and energies." 

The most serious charge against the Jesuits is 
that they hold and practice the doctrine that "the 
end justifies the means." This they stoutly deny. 
But Blaise Pascal, that brilliant French author, 
himself an ardent Catholic, fastened it upon them, 
two hundred and fifty years ago, in his famous 
"Provincial Letters," so tightly that it has stuck 
till now, and will stick forever. Pascal convinced 
the world that the followers of Loyola were gov- 
erned by that mischievous and Satanic principle, 
whether the very words were in their books or 
not. The Jesuits made a feeble attempt to defend 
themselves. But their reputation follows them, 
as a black shadow, wherever they go. Their his- 
tory shows that they regard any sins and crimes 
as justifiable and praiseworthy which will pro- 



What Protestants Believe 185 

mote "the greater glory of God" by building up 
their society and strengthening the papal church. 
The greatest of all sins is heresy, forsaking Rome 
and becoming a Protestant. But a Jesuit can pre- 
tend to do that and become an ardent member of 
a society of heretics, in order to learn its secrets 
and defeat its efforts. A Jesuit can lie and perjure 
himself and practice all manner of deceit and kill 
a heretical ruler, at the command of his General, 
and verily believe that he is doing service to God 
and earning more stars for his celestial crown. 
He has been taught an intricate system of cas- 
uistry and mental reservation, by which he makes 
himself believe that, while his tongue and eyes 
and hands and conscious will are doing all sorts of 
deviltry, his sub-conscious soul is innocent and 
pure. On account of its diabolical principles, this 
society has produced more disturbances in the 
world than any other society that ever existed. Its 
methods are deceit, fraud, treachery, craft, fox- 
like cunning, combined with the cold-blooded 
cruelty of Hell itself. It works in the dark, and 
the Prince of Darkness is its founder and master. 
The word "Jesuitism" has become synonomous 
with everything that is dark and treacherous. 



186 What Protestants Believe 

One of the great dictionaries gives this definition 
of the word Jesuitism : 'The principles and prac- 
tices of the Jesuits; cunning, deceit, hypocrisy." 
That is their name and that is their character. 
There has been a book in circulation for three 
hundred years called "Monita Secreta." It pur- 
ports to be Secret Instructions by which the mem- 
bers of the Society of Jesus are to be directed and 
aided in assaulting the patriotism and morals and 
purses of the victims of their flattery and cunning. 
If it is genuine, it brands the Society with eternal 
infamy. They say that it is a forgery of their 
enemies. So much can be said in favor of its au- 
thenticity : It appeared at about the same time in 
many different countries, in very nearly the same 
words; many prominent Jesuits have admitted 
that it came from the General of their order; it 
was attributed when it first appeared in Acqua- 
viva to the Jesuit General, and he never disowned 
it. After the suppression of the order and the 
confiscation of its property, copies of the book 
were found in the houses and colleges of the 
Jesuits, and Louis Prosper Gachard, the renouned 
archaeologist and literary critic of Belgium, on 



What Protestants Believe 187 

whom Prescott and Motley relied in writing their 
histories, pronounced it genuine. 

One quotation from this pernicious document 
will suffice to show its general character : "That 
ecclesiastical persons gain a great footing in the 
favor of princes and noblemen by winking at their 
vices and putting a favorable construction on 
whatever they do amiss, experience convinces, and 
this we may observe in their contracting mar- 
riages with thier near relations and kindred or the 
like. It must be our business to encourage such 
whose inclination lies this way by leading them 
up in hopes that through our assistance they may 
easily obtain dispensation from the Pope/' 

Napoleon Bonaparte, who certainly knew men 
and institutions, says : "The Jesuits are a military 
organization, not a religious order. Their chief 
is the general of an army, not the father of a mon- 
astery. And the aim of this order is power, in the 
most despotic exercise, absolute power, power to 
control the world by the volition of a single man. 
Jesuitism is the most absolute of despotisms ; and, 
at the same time, the greatest and most enormous 
of abuses. The General of the Jesuits insists on 
being master and sovereign over the sovereign. 



188 What Protestants Believe 

Wherever the Jesuits are admitted, they will be 
masters, cost what it may. Their society is by 
nature dictatorial, and therefore it is the irrecon- 
cilable enemy of all constituted authority. Every 
act, every crime, however atrocious, is a meritor- 
ious work, if committed in the interest of the 
Society of the Jesuits or by the order of the 
General." 

Thomas Carlyle said: "For two centures the 
genius of mankind has been dominated by the 
gospel of Ignatius Loyola, the poison-fountain 
from which these rivers of bitterness that now 
submerge the world have flowed. Long now have 
the English people understood that Jesuits proper 
are servants of the Prince of Darkness. Men had 
served the devil, and men had very imperfectly 
served God, but to think that God could be served 
more perfectly by taking the devil into partner- 
ship — this was the novelty of St. Ignatius." 

Let us briefly trace the history of Jesuitism in 
the different nations of the world. Of course it 
flourished in Italy, right under the shadow of the 
papal throne. But it was hated and opposed by 
many Italian princes, because it tried to make 
them mere vassals of the Roman See. It exists 



What Protestants Believe 189 

today in the kingdom of Italy only by evading the 
law and operating in the dark. 

Jesuitism got into Spain by stealth and fraud, 
against the opposition of the Cardinal- Archbishop 
of Burgos. At length Charles V. interfered and 
gave the Jesuits all they wanted. In return, they 
helped him to extinguish the last spark of civil 
liberty. They became very numerous and power- 
ful. They established their missions in all the 
Spanish colonies of the three Americas and con- 
verted millions of natives to Catholicism with 
fagot and sword. In the later history of the Pen- 
insula they caused much trouble and defeated the 
people again and again in their efforts to establish 
liberal government. Five separate times they 
have been expelled from Spanish territory. 

The Jesuits got into France under Charles IX., 
against the bitter opposition of all the bishops, the 
University of Paris and the people, by deceit, 
promising to stand by the liberty of the Gallican 
Church. This promise, of course, they did not 
keep. They encouraged and abetted the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew. It would be more correct to 
say that they were the authors of that carnival of 
horrors. Catherine de Medicis and her imbecile 



190 What Protestants Believe 

son were but their tools. They were the bitter 
enemies of Henry IV., and procured his assassin- 
ation. They brought about the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes, whereby they inflicted on France 
the worst wound she ever suffered. They were 
expelled in 1594, and have received their walking 
papers six times since. They have no legal rights 
there now. 

In Germany the Protestants and Romanists 
were living in peace and harmony till the coming 
of the Jesuits. There were nine of the former to 
one of the latter. The Pope did not like this har- 
mony and used the Jesuits to stir up strife and 
persecution. The Collegium Germanicum was 
established at Rome to train young Germans to 
plot treason against their fatherland. The de- 
struction of Protestantism in Germany was the 
constant thought and aim of the followers of 
Loyola. They established schools all over the 
land. They persuaded the princes that Protes- 
tantism would destroy monarchy. They turned 
back the land of Luther toward Rome. Germany 
will not tolerate the Society of Jesus now. 

The Jesuits entered England in disguise, under 
fictitious names, as stealthily as nocturnal robbers. 



What Protestants Believe 191 

They tried to excite the people to rebel against 
their Protestant rulers. They had an English 
College at Rome to train men for rebels. They 
sent back swarms of conspirators. They con- 
spired to murder Queen Elizabeth and to put 
Mary of Scotland on the throne. They had Eliz- 
abeth cited to Rome for trial for heresy and got 
the pope to depose her. Then they made Philip 
II. of Spain send the Armada to execute their 
decree and the pope's. Later they swarmed around 
Charles II., who was a Papist while pretending to 
be a Protestant. They hatched the "gunpowder 
plot" to blow up King James I. and both houses 
of Parliament. There are thousands of them in 
England today, striving, with much success, to 
turn the Church of England back to Rome. 

In Portugal the Jesuits became very rich and 
powerful. In Paraguay, a colony of Portugal, 
they established a kingdom of their own, which 
rebelled against the home government. An at- 
tempt was made to assassinate the king, of which 
they were believed to be the authors. This 
brought about their expulsion. 

The Society of Jesus sent an army of mission- 
aries to India, China and Japan. In those lands 



192 What Protestants Believe 

their motto was "All things to all men." They 
have received much praise for their missionary- 
labors and achievements. They did display a fa- 
natical zeal, which was wonderful, though not ad- 
mirable. Francis Xavier has been glorified even 
by Protestants and placed by the side of the Apos- 
tle Paul. But these facts are to be noted con- 
cerning Xavier : he was a wild fanatic ; he fooled 
the natives by performing mock miracles, going so 
far as to pretend to raise the dead; he employed 
Portuguese troops to pull down pagan temples and 
to compel heathen tribes to accept baptism at his 
hands; his converts were nothing but baptized 
heathen, who could say "Our Father" and "Hail 
Mary" without any intelligent conception of the 
difference between the One Omnipotent God of 
the Christians and the many gods which they had 
been accustomed to worship. The missionary 
work of the Jesuits in the far East was wretched 
in the extreme. It does not deserve one word of 
praise. They baptized vast multitudes of natives 
who knew nothing of Christianity. They became 
Brahmins in India; and brought the cause of 
Christianity into degradation by practicing the 
idolatrous rites and ceremonies of that country. 



What Protestants Believe 193 

In China they joined with the natives in worship- 
ing Confucius instead of Christ. They did far 
more harm than good. They created a prejudice 
against real Christianity which the Protestant 
missionaries have to resist today. By interfering 
with the governments of India, China and Japan, 
they got themselves expelled from those countries 
and caused Christ to be barred out for genera- 
tions. In North America they discovered some 
rivers and named some lakes and baptized many 
savages. But they made the natives worse than 
they were before by adding hatred of Protestants 
to the devilish spirit by which they were already 
possessed. The fiendish massacres and burnings 
which the Indians of Canada inflicted on our fore- 
fathers at Deerfield and Schenectady and scores 
of other frontier settlements were incited by the 
Jesuits "for the greater glory of God." That 
was their method of evangelizing and Christian- 
izing the continent. 

The Jesuits have been praised for their educa- 
tional work. They have founded a multitude of 
schools and have instructed millions of students. 
But they teach a false philosophy, tainted ethics, 
lying history and fictitious biography. Their sys- 



194 What Protestants Believe 

tern of education is calculated to narrow the mind, 
and to put a straight- jacket upon its noblest pow- 
ers. Their students are closely watched ; all books 
are taken from them which have a liberal ten- 
dency; truths of the highest importance are con- 
cealed ; exploded errors are revived ; and most of 
what is taught is useless, if not altogether false. 
The Jesuit instructors make their pupils puppets 
in a mechanical system of philosophy, slaves to an 
ecclesiastical tyrant and traitors to their country. 
It would be better to turn a boy loose to be his own 
teacher, than put him into a Jesuit College. 

In the middle of the eighteenth century the 
order of the Jesuits was at the zenith of its power. 
Their corporate wealth was very great, they 
swarmed everywhere in great numbers ; they were 
the confessors of the high and noble; they were 
educators of the youth ; they were the controlling 
power in almost every Catholic country. But 
they had a sudden fall. The nations awoke to the 
fact that the Jesuits were absorbing their wealth, 
corrupting their morals and making them slaves 
of the pope. They rose up almost simultaneously 
and demanded that the Roman Pontiff should sup- 
press the order. Most of them banished the black- 



What Protestants Believe 195 

coated traitors from their territories, without 
waiting for the word of the pope, beginning with 
Portugal. Clement III. was an ardent friend of 
the Jesuits. But he could not long resist the uni- 
versal storm which was sweeping over Catholic 
Europe. He gave his word to the Catholic sover- 
eigns that he would sign the death warrant of the 
Society of Jesus on a certain day. During the 
night preceding the appointed day the pope was 
seized with convulsions and died. The whole 
world exclaimed: "The Jesuits have poisoned 
him!" So the world believes today. The next 
pope was Clement XIV. He was one of the ablest 
and best men who have ever worn the triple 
crown. After four years of careful investigation, 
he gave great joy to the great body of Christians 
throughout the world, on the 21st of July, 1773, 
by issuing his celebrated bull, "Dominis Redemp- 
tor" whereby he decreed "that the name of the 
company of Jesus shall be, and is forever extin- 
guished and suppressed," and that the said bull of 
suppression and abolition shall "forever and to all 
eternity be valid, permanent and efficacious." At 
the same time the pope confiscated all the property 
of the Jesuits, gave their schools to other orders 



196 What Protestants Believe 

and imprisoned their General, Ricci. Everybody 
believed that the Jesuits would murder the pope, 
if they could. Hence all avenues of approach to 
his presence were carefully guarded. These ef- 
forts were successful for eight months, when a 
peasant woman procured admission to the palace 
and presented his holiness with a fig in which 
poison was concealed. He ate it without fear. 
Soon the poison began to work. He exclaimed: 
"Alas, I knew they would poison me !" He died 
in great agony. This is not a Protestant inven- 
tion, but the testimony of Roman Catholic 
historians. 

The Jesuits refused to disband. They sought 
shelter in Russia and Prussia and other non-Ro- 
manist countries. In 1814, Paul VII, reestab- 
lished the Society of Jesus, revoking what his in- 
fallible predecessor had said should stand "forever 
and to all eternity/' The Jesuits came out of their 
holes more numerous, richer and more cunning 
and powerful than before. 

How numerous are the Jesuits? That is a hard 
question to answer, because all their works are 
done in darkness. Forty years ago their numbers 
were estimated at twelve thousand. They must be 



What Protestants Believe 197 

much more numerous now. They, and their 
schools and convents and churches and other es- 
tablishments, are very numerous in this country 
and in England. They are giving their special 
attention to us and to our English brethren, be- 
cause they have been outlawed in most other 
countries and because they know that war between 
Romanism and Protestantism is to be fought 
chiefly under the Stars and Stripes and the Union 
Jack. 

What have the Jesuits done and attempted? 
That question has been answered, in part, already. 
They have turned back the tide of the Reform- 
ation. They have made the Papacy more decent 
by keeping common murderers and acknowledged 
whore-masters out of the papal chair. They de- 
luged Holland with Protestant and patriotic 
blood. They tried to make North America French 
and Romanist. They have kept Mexico down in 
the mud of ignorance and superstition. They 
have made Spain the basest of European nations. 
They tried to divide and destroy the American Re- 
public. Over the last statement we must linger a 
moment. William Dean Howells, the brilliant 
journalist and author, tells us that, when he was 



198 What Protestants Believe 

U. S. consul at Venice, Garibaldi said to him: 
"We Italians know the only cause of the civil war 
in your country. In this world there is but one 
cause of mischief — the Jesuits/' Abraham Lin- 
coln said to Father Chiniquy: 'This war would 
never have been possible without the sinister in- 
fluence of the Jesuits." Pope Pius IX., who was 
a mere tool in the hands of the Society of Jesus, 
blessed Jefferson Davis and acknowledged him as 
the legitimate ruler of the Confederate States. 
The Jesuits influenced Napoleon III. to intervene 
in the affairs of Mexico, while the North and 
and South were at war. They assassinated Lin- 
coln. They did all they could to prevent the unifi- 
cation and liberation of Italy. Using the Empress 
Eugenia as a tool, they fomented the war between 
France and Prussia, expecting that the Protestant 
side would go down in defeat. They have greatly 
increased the abomniable idolatry of the Virgin 
Mary in all the Roman Catholic world. They 
have controlled all the councils of the Roman 
church for the past three hundred years. They 
brought about the enactment of the decree of the 
"Immaculate Conception/' in 1854, and of "Papal 
Infallibility/' in 1870. 



What Protestants Believe 199 

What are the Jesuits doing, and what are they 
trying to do ? They control the Roman Catholic 
Church. They elect and boss the popes. Pius IX. 
was their tool absolutely. Fear of assassination 
made him subservient to their will. Leo XIII. , 
was trained in a Jesuit college. Pope Pius X. was 
under Jesuit control. His prime-minister, Car- 
dinal Merry Del Val, was a Jesuit. The General 
of the Society of Jesus, whom the Italians call 
'The Black Pope," is the real ruler of the Roman 
Catholic church. The Jesuits swarm through this 
country. They are plotting against our public 
schools. They are supporting a multitude of their 
own colleges. They manipulate all the societies 
and associations of the Roman Catholic Church, 
such as the Knights of Columbus. They are ac- 
cumulating vast wealth. They maintain a power- 
ful lobby at Washington. They have the ear of 
our President. They have throttled the press of 
the nation, so that not a word can be printed that 
is not favorable to Rome. They have their spies 
in our secret societies and all our private counsels. 

At what do the Jesuits aim ? Reaction ? Reac- 
tion ! REACTION ! They are the embodiment 
of reaction. "Back to the middle ages !" is their 



200 What Protestants Believe 

cry. They aim at the restoration of the temporal 
power of the pope ; the absolute supremacy of the 
pope over every civil ruler everywhere; the over- 
throw of constitutional government; the putting 
of all education into their hands; and the utter 
extermination of Protestantism. You say "they 
can never carry out such a program as that ; the 
spirit of the ages is utterly against them." So it 
would seem. But they will cause us much trouble 
unless we wake up and circumvent them. Seven- 
ty-five separate acts of expulsion have been passed 
against them by foreign nations. But we, in our 
blindness, give them perfect liberty, and encour- 
age them, to plot our ruin. 

Shall we nurse in our bosom an oathbound, se- 
cret fraternity of thousands of the most cunning, 
unscrupulous and thoroughly trained experts in 
diplomacy, flattery and fraud, under the absolute 
direction of a foreign General, himself the life- 
long slave of a hideous superstition, the sole aim 
and end of whose existence is to exterminate 
Protestant Christianity, religious liberty and 
every form of liberal government? That is ex- 
actly what we are doing, in tolerating the Jesuits. 

Thomas Arnold, of Rugby, said that popery 



What Protestants Believe 201 

was the invention of the Devil. He was correct; 
and Jesuitism is the heart and soul and life of 
Popery. 



202 What Protestants Believe 



"For there is one God and one mediator be- 
tween God and men, the man Christ Jesus." I Tim. 
2:5. 

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy 
laden, and / will give you rest." Mat. 1 1 :2& 



A FREE CHURCH IN A FREE STATE 

<< * * * R en( i er un t Caesar the things 
which are Caesar's ; unto God the things which are 
God's/ 5 — Matthew, xxii:2i. 

We Protestants believe that we ought to render 
respect and obedience to the civil government un- 
der which we live and to obey the laws and ordi- 
nances of the nation, state and city. We also 
believe that we ought to render loyal service to 
the church of which we may be members, to obey 
its rules and regulations and to show proper re- 
spect to its officers and ministers. If the law of 
the land required us to do something which the 
law of God forbids, we would obey God and suffer 
the consequences. In 1850 the Congress of the 
United States passed a law making it the duty 
of every citizen when called upon, to assist in the 
capture and re-enslavement of any bondman es- 
caping from Southern slavery. Many good men 
believed that that law conflicted with the law of 
God, as written in the Bible, and refused to obey. 
If our Church should make a rule, or our minister 

203 



204 What Protestants Believe 

should ask us to do some thing which we believed 
to be contrary to the law of God, we Protestants 
would disobey the Church and the minister. We 
put the law of God first. To find out what the law 
of God is, we go to the Bible and the Bible only. 
The Church and the minister may help us to find 
out what the Bible says; but the Bible alone re- 
veals to us the will of Heaven. Next to the law 
of God we put the laws of the state and nation, 
which do not conflict with the law of God. In 
the third, and last, place we put the rules and 
regulations of the Church and the admonitions 
and suggestions of the minister. We strive to 
obey all the laws of God. We obey all the civil 
laws which do not violate the laws of God. We 
seek to obey all the rules of the Church, which do 
not conflict with the laws of God and the laws of 
the land. That is Protestantism. 

Our Roman Catholic friends take an entirely 
different view of this matter. We have three 
terms, the law of God, the civil law and the law 
of the Church. They have but two terms, the law 
of the Church and the law of the land. To them 
the law of the Church is always the law of God; 
they cannot by any possibility be two. Another 



What Protestants Believe 205 

very important fact, which must never be for- 
gotten, is that to the true, loyal Romanist the 
Church is always the Pope. To the Romanist 
there are just two laws, or two sets of laws, the 
law of the Pope and the civil law ; and the law of 
the Pope is always supreme. If the law of the 
Pope and the law of the nation, state or city con- 
flict, the true Romanist always obeys the law of 
the Pope. 

There is another difference between us Prot- 
estants and our Roman Catholic fellow citizens. 
We hold that State and Church should forever be 
separate. We hold that the state should allow to 
all its citizens the right to worship God just as 
they please, and protect them in the same, and 
treat all denominations and sects and creeds ex- 
actly alike. On the other side, the Church, in its 
various branches, should not interfere with the 
state or seek in any way to control its action. If 
the church desires better laws and better civil 
administration, she should seek to secure them by 
making out of the raw material of humanity, bet- 
ter men who will make better laws. We believe in 
a free Church in a free State. The State should 
not control the Church and the Church should not 



206 What Protestants Believe 

control the State. Each should be free and su- 
preme in its own sphere. But the Romanists be- 
lieve that State and Church should be united. The 
state should protect and support one church, the 
Roman Catholic, and should outlaw and prohibit 
and utterly destroy all other churches and all 
other religions. The state should be the servant 
of the one, only, true, holy, papal, Roman Cath- 
olic Church, executing her laws, obeying her com- 
mands and wielding all the power of the sword to 
exterpate her enemies and to conquer the world 
for her. No civil law has any binding force, un- 
less it is sanctioned by the Church, and no civil 
officer has any authority unless the Church con- 
sents; and the Church, you must remember, is 
always the Pope of Rome. The Romanists believe 
in a free church in, or standing upon, an enslaved 
state. The state should not control the church. 
But the church should, in all things, control the 
state. If you contradict what I have said, you 
show that you are very ignorant of history and 
utterly unacquainted with the claims which Rome 
has alwas put forth. 

Let us consider still further the attitude of 
Rome. First, the Roman Catholic Church is stub- 



What Protestants Believe 207 

bornly opposed to every shape and shadow of re- 
ligious liberty. We Protestants hold that every 
man has a right to believe and worship as he 
pleases, provided he does not interfere with the 
rights and privileges of other men. For his re- 
ligious opinions and practices he is responsible to 
no being in the universe but God. Rome says: 
"There is only one religion and one Church. Ev- 
erybody is bound to think and believe and worship 
as the Pope directs. It is the duty of the State 
to exterminate all other religions and all other 
churches and compel everybody to believe and 
worship according to this one rule." Rome says : 
"Believe as I tell you, or lose your civil privileges, 
your property, your liberty and our life." I do 
not say that all Roman Catholics have knowingly 
subscribed to that creed of absolute intolerance. 
Many of them think that they believe in religious 
liberty. But that is what the Roman Church has 
always believed and taught ; and every Romanist 
is bound to believe it, or be everlastingly damned. 
Pope after Pope (and they are all infallible) has 
declared it to be an article of belief, necessary for 
salvation, that no other religion should be tolerated 
anywhere but the Roman Catholic. In a circular 



208 What Protestants Believe 

letter in 1808, Pope Pius VII. said: "It has been 
proposed that all religious persuasions should be 
free and their worship publicly exercised. But 
we have rejected this article as contrary to the 
canons and councils of the Catholic Church." In 
185 1 Pius IX. said: "The Catholic religion ought 
to be exclusively dominant in such sort that every 
other worship shall be banished and interdicted/ 5 
In 1878 the same Pope condemned certain "Princi- 
pal Errors of our Times." Among them was this : 
"That in the present time it is no longer necessary 
that the Catholic religion shall be held as the only 
religion of the state, to the exclusion of all other 
modes of worship." Pope Leo XIII. sent out a 
circular letter, dated January 10, 1902, in which 
he said: "The supreme teacher of the Church is 
the Roman Pontiff. Union of minds, therefore, 
requires, together with perfect accord in one faith, 
complete submission and obedience of will to the 
Church and to the Roman Pontiff as to God him- 
self." The Popes and councils have declared again 
and again that all heretics (and all Protestants are 
heretics) ought to be put to death, and that it is 
a meritorious act for any Catholic to kill any 
heretic, at any time and in any place. To kill a 



What Protestants Believe 209 

heretic will shorten the duration of a Catholic's 
stay in Purgatory, after his death. In all coun- 
tries where the Church of Rome has complete 
control all other religions are forbidden by law. In 
most of the old Catholic countries complete or 
partial religious liberty has been granted by the 
government, at the demand of the spirit of the 
times; but always against the protest and oppo- 
sition of Rome. Down to the establishment of 
the Kingdom of United Italy, in 1870, the city of 
Rome and the surrounding country was governed 
by the Pope. He was the absolute civil, as well 
as religious, ruler. He had his way and Romanism 
bore its perfected fruit What was the result? 
Protestant worship was absolutely forbidden by 
law except in the houses of ambassadors sent to 
the Pope by Protestant governments. Not a Bible 
could be sold, not a voice could be heard preach- 
ing Christ, on any part of the Italian soil; the 
punishment for such a crime was imprisonment or 
death. It would be the same today, if the Pope 
could have his way. What do American Roman 
Catholics think and say? They sometimes prate 
about religious liberty. But all they mean is 
liberty for themselves till they can grow strong 



210 What Protestants Believe 

enough to rule the land. Then religious liberty 
will be extinguished in the blood of all who re- 
sist their will. Listen to some of the sweet and 
lovely sentiments of these only representatives of 
the meek and lowly Jesus : "The Catholic World," 
one of their leading papers, wholly controlled by 
the priests, said, in April 1870, "The Church is 
instituted, as every Catholic who understands his 
religion believes, to guard and defend the rights 
of God on earth against any and every enemy, at 
all times and in all places. She, therefore, does not 
and cannot accept, or in any degree favor, liberty 
in the Protestant sense of liberty." The "Free- 
man's Journal" of New York (What a name for 
a paper which can utter such sentiments) says: 
"Religious liberty, in the sense of a liberty pos- 
sessed by every man to choose his own religion, 
is one of the most wicked delusions ever foisted 
upon this age by the father of all deceit. No man 
has a right to* choose his religion. Catholicism 
is the most intolerant of creeds. It is intolerance 
itself, for it is truth itself. We might as ration- 
ally maintain that a sane man has a right to be- 
lieve that 2 and 2 do not make 4, as this theory of 
religious liberty. Its impiety is only equalled by 



What Protestants Believe 211 

its absurdity." The "Shepherd of the Valley/' a 
Roman Catholic paper published in St. Louis, says : 
"The Church is of necessity intolerant. Heresy 
she endures when and where she must; but she 
hates it, and directs all her energies to its de- 
struction. If Catholics ever gain an immense 
numerical majority, religious freedom in this 
country is at an end. So our enemies say. So we 
believe." "The Catholic Review" of 1865 says: 
"Protestantism has not, and never can have, any 
right where Catholicity has triumphed. Therefore, 
we lose the breath we expend in declaiming 
against bigotry and intolerance and in favor of re- 
ligious liberty, or the right of man to be of any 
religion as best pleases him." The Right Rev. 
O'Connor, Bishop of Pittsburgh, says : "Religious 
liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be 
carried into effect without peril to the Catholic 
Church." 

"The Catholic Church numbers one-third of 
the American population; and if its membership 
shall increase, for the next thirty years, as it has 
the thirty years past, in 1900, Rome will have a 
majority, and be bound to take this country and 
keep it. There is, ere long, to be a state religion 



212 What Protestants Believe 

in this country, and that state religion is to be 
the Roman Catholic." This last is from Father 
Hecker, in the Catholic World, of July, 1870. His 
prophecy has not come true ; but that is the aim 
and expectation of the whole hierarchy of bloody 
old Rome. The editor of the " Western Watch- 
man" uses these soft and honeyed words : "We 
would draw and quarter Protestantism. We would 
impale it and hang it up for crows' nests. We 
would tear it with pincers, and bore it with hot 
iron. We would fill it with molten lead and 
sink it into hell fire a hundred fathoms deep." 
Some of the priests of Rome, like Archbishop Ire- 
land, pretend to deny some of these statements. 
But not one of them would dare to publish, over 
his own signature, a clear declaration that he be- 
lieves that every man has a perfect right to his 
own religious belief and that all religious bodies 
ought to be forever equal before the law. The 
Pope would silence and excommunicate him, if he 
did. Nothing is more certain than that if the 
Roman Catholic hierarchy had full control in this 
country they would make Romanism the state 
religion, shut all other places of worship and com- 
pel us to choose between death and bowing to the 



What Protestants Believe 213 

Pope and the Virgin Mary. The Church of Rome 
has always claimed the right to punish heretics 
with death. Her track through the centuries has 
been a track of fire and blood. She has shed the 
blood of uncounted millions. Her right to murder 
Protestants is in her creed, put there by succes- 
sive Popes so deep that it cannot be taken out. 
Protestants have no right which Romanists are 
bound to respect. We have kind-hearted Roman 
Catholic neighbors who would not want to do us 
any harm. But if the pinch came, their priests 
would command them to draw the sword against 
us, or go to hell. Sometimes very kind Romanists 
get angry and spit out what is in their hearts. A 
wealthy Romanist in the city of Rochester told a 
Protestant lady, with whom he had a little argu- 
ment, that he hoped to see the time when he 
could wade through Protestant blood to his an- 
kles. That is the spirit of Rome, though it is not 
the spirit of every person who belongs to that 
organization. 

The second fact which I wish to impress upon 
your minds is that Rome is as bitterly opposed to 
civil, as to religious, liberty. I have not the time 
to give to this subject that it deserves. Rome 



214 What Protestants Believe 

hates democracy. She pretends to accept it in 
this country, because it is policy to do so; and 
very many of her priests and laymen believe in 
our Constitution and the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. But the real Rome, the Pope, would, 
if it were possible, destroy every liberal govern- 
ment on the globe and make absolutism and 
despotism universal. Every historian traces the 
liberty of the English-speaking communities of 
the world back to Magna Charta granted to Eng- 
land, by King John, in 1215. But the Pope who 
reigned at that time cursed the Charta and re- 
leased the king from the obligation to keep its 
provisions as he had solemnly sworn that he 
would. All along the ages Rome, herself a spirit- 
ual despotism, has been on the side of political 
despotism. Pope Leo XIII. in a circular letter 
sent out in 1885, said: 'The sovereignty of the 
people is a doctrine which lacks all reasonable 
proof and all power of insuring public safety." 
During our Civil war, Pope Pius IX. sent a let- 
ter of congratulation and blessing to Jeff Davis 
and acknowledged him to be the lawful President 
of the Southern Confederacy. As a result of the 
publication of that letter a large proportion of the 



What Protestants Believe 215 

Romanists in the Union army deserted the flag. 
It is doubtful if the South would have ventured 
to embark on the bloody waves of secession, if 
the leaders had not had assurance from the Pope 
that the Jesuits, the bishops, the priests and the 
whole population of the Church of Rome would 
help them. To my mind it has been proved that 
the assassination of President Lincoln was the 
result of a Jesuit plot. Hear what three great 
men think of Rome and democracy. LaFayette, 
a Romanist himself who had seen how Romanism 
had cursed and blighted the fair realm of France, 
said : "If the liberties of the American people are 
ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the 
Catholic clergy." Gladstone wrote: "No more 
cunning plot was ever devised against the intelli- 
gence, the freedom, the happiness and virtue of 
mankind than Romanism." Richard W. Thomp- 
son, Secretary of the Navy, said, in his book, the 
"Papacy and the Civil Power": "Nothing is 
plainer than that, if the principles of the Church 
of Rome prevail, our Constitution would neces- 
sarily fall. The two cannot exist together. They 
are in open and direct antagonism with the fun- 
damental theory of our government everywhere." 



216 What Protestants Believe 

A third glaring and frightful fact is that the 
Pope claims the supreme allegiance of every hu- 
man soul. He is above every emperor, king, 
prince, president, governor, legislator, judge, 
magistrate and officer, of every sort, anywhere in 
the world. He has the right, though fortunately, 
not the power, to depose the President of these 
United States and to set aside any law that can be 
framed and any decree or judgment of any court 
or tribunal. Every loyal child of the Church will 
obey the Pope first, and the law of the land after- 
ward. If the will of the Pope and the law of the 
land are in conflict he will choose to obey the 
Pope. No man can be a loyal American and a 
loyal Romanist at the same time. The loyal 
Romanist owes supreme allegiance to a foreign 
despot. There are thousands of Roman Catholics 
in this country who intend to be loyal citizens of 
the Republic. But if any conflict should arise be- 
tween love of country and love of Church, they 
would have to choose the Church or incur the 
danger of eternal damnation in hell. If you say 
"No" to this you reveal your extreme ignorance 
of history and of current events. All along the 
ages the Popes have claimed, and exercised, the 



What Protestants Believe 217 

right to depose kings and queens. Pope Innocent 
III. deposed King John of England; and Pope 
Sixtus declared Queen Elizabeth deposed and sent 
over the Spanish Armada to execute his decree. 
But England's naval prowess and the wrath of 
Almighty God sent most of the Spanish soldiers 
and sailors to the bottom of the sea. If you 
should ask any intelligent and loyal Romanist 
what he would do if the commands of the Church 
and the law of the land should conflict, he would 
instantly answer: "I would obey the Church/' 
The last Pope but two, Pius IX., said, in one of 
his circular letters : "It is an error to hold that, 
in case of conflicting laws between the two powers 
the civil law ought to prevail." 

Let the Rev. D. S. Phelan speak for his Church. 
From his pulpit in St. Louis June 30, 19 12, as 
reported in a Romanist paper, 'The Western 
Watchman/' he said: 'The Catholics of the 
world love the Church more than anything else, 
more than they do their own nation, more than 
they do their own government. We of the Cath- 
olic Church are ready to go to the death for the 
Church. Under God, she is the supreme object 
of our worship. Tell us that we think more of 



218 What Protestants Believe 

the Church than we do of the United States ; of 
course we do. Tell us we are Catholics first and 
Americans or Englishmen afterward; of course 
we are* Tell us, in the conflict between the 
Church and the civil government we take the 
side of the Church; of course we do. Why, if 
the government of the United States were at war 
with the Church, we would say tomorrow, to hell 
with the government of the United States; and 
if the Church and all the governments of the 
world were at war, we would say, to hell with all 
the governments of the world. They say we are 
Catholics first and Americans decidedly after- 
ward. There is no doubt about it. We are Cath- 
olics first and we love the Church more than we 
love any and all the governments of the world. 
Let the governments of the world steer clear of 
the Catholic Church. Let the emperors, let the 
kings, and the presidents not come into conflict 
with the head of the Catholic Church. Because 
the Catholic Church is everything to all the Cath- 
olics of the world ; they renounce all nationalities 
where there is question of loyalty to her. And 
why is the Pope so strong? Why, the Pope is the 
ruler of the world. All the emperors, all the 



What Protestants Believe 219 

kings, all the princes, all the presidents of the 
world today are as these altar boys of mine. The 
Pope is the ruler of the world. The Catholics of 
the world are Catholics first and always. They 
are Americans, they are Germans, they are 
French, they are English afterward." Those 
words have not been contradicted by any one 
authorized to speak for Rome. That is sound 
Roman Catholic doctrine. What if we should 
say: "We are Methodists first and Americans 
afterward?" Would they not call us "traitors" ? 
And would we not be ? 

The fourth fact which I present for your re- 
flection is that the Roman Catholic church dis- 
honors and defies the laws of the land whenever 
it suits her pleasure. At the fairs, which they 
hold to raise money for their priests and their in- 
stitutions, they almost always operate gambling 
devices and sell intoxicating drinks contrary to 
state and national law. The priests of Rome con- 
sider themselves above the law. In many cases I 
know that they disregard the law concerning the 
recording of marriages, A city clerk once told 
me that the priest in the city where he was did 
not comply with the law and, when he asked him 



220 What Protestants Believe 

about it, he defiantly made reply: "I record all 
my marriages in the records of my parish, and 
that is enough." When reminded of the law of 
the State of New York, he said: "I want you to 
understand that the Church is above the law." 
And the clerk, who owed his election to the Ro- 
man Catholic vote, held his peace. A Methodist 
minister, using such language, would have been 
prosecuted for violating the law. According to 
the statutes of the State we, men and women, are 
lawfully married. But Rome laughs at the law 
and says that, because we were not married by a 
Roman priest, we are living in gross and damn- 
able adultery. If a Romanist is married to a 
Protestant woman by a Protestant minister, a 
Romanist priest would tell him that he could 
lawfully forsake his wife and marry again, a 
woman of his own faith. That is what Rome 
would tell him. But the State of New York would 
tell him, that if he did what his priest told him, he 
would commit a state's prison crime. Thus Rome 
sets our laws at naught, 

A fifth appalling fact is that Rome, to a very 
large extent, rules this nation today. Rome can 
get almost anything she wants from our State and 



What Protestants Believe 221 

National governments. The United States Gov- 
ernment supports three Roman Catholic churches 
and four priests in Panama. Nearly all the chap- 
lains in the army and navy are Romanists. The 
street railways and many of the steam railroads 
and steamship lines permit priests and nuns to 
ride for nothing, while Protestant ministers must 
pay. Roman Catholics are given the privilege to 
heg money in the different departments at Wash- 
ington^ while the privilege is denied to Protes- 
tants. A Jesuit censor controls the columns of 
every large daily paper in this nation, so that the 
truth about Rome cannot get into print, while 
everything that is derogatory to Protestantism is 
given the largest display. There is hardly a paper 
between the oceans that dares to utter a word of 
criticism of anything which Rome says or does, or 
that will give any Protestant church or institution 
a fair show. Nearly all the teachers in the public 
schools in Chicago are Romanists, and many other 
cities, notwithstanding the fact that Rome is curs- 
ing the public schools and doing all she can to 
destroy them. The friends and relatives of sol- 
diers buried in the National Cemetery of Arling- 
ton, Virginia, are forbidden to put Masonic em- 



222 What Protestants Believe 

blems on their headstones, though Romanist em* 
blems are allowed. On the recommendation of 
President Taf t $7,500,000 were given to Rome for 
the friar lands in the Philippines which were not 
worth one million. The Roman Catholic catechism 
is taught in every public school in the Philippines, 
The city of New York gave the Roman Catholic 
Church the ground on which St. Patrick's Ca- 
thedral stands, worth a million dollars at the time, 
and several millions now. In many cities the 
Roman Catholic Churches pay nothing for the 
street improvements made in front of their build- 
ings. No Protestant Church ever had such ex^ 
emption. Nearly all the great cities of our Re- 
public are governed by Roman Catholic mayors 
and common councils of which a majority are 
Romanists ; and they rule the cities in the interest 
of Rome. In nearly all the great manufacturing 
plants, and on many of the great railroad systems, 
some mysterious influence is at work, with great 
success, to drive out every employe who is not a 
Romanist. Rome is getting her cruel grip on 
almost everything in this nation. 

Do you know that Rome is doing her best, or 
worst, to destroy our public schools ? Such is the 



What Protestants Believe 223 

truth. Why do not our great and small news- 
papers sound the alarm and try to save our schools 
before it is too late ? Because the miserable cow- 
ards dare not whisper a word against Rome. If 
she should propose to cut our throats, it is doubt- 
ful whether a paper in New York or Washington 
or Buffalo would object, Rome can do what she 
will for all they care. 

Word has gone out from the headquarters of 
the "scarlet colored beast" that the American 
system of free public schools must come to an end. 
Cardinal Capel, speaking for the Pope, recently 
said : "The time is not far away when the Roman 
Catholic Church of the Republic of the United 
States, at the order of the Pope, will refuse to pay 
their school tax, and will send bullets to the 
breasts of the government agents rather than 
pay it. It will come as quick as the click of a trig- 
ger, and will be obeyed, of course, as coming from 
God himself ." The highest authorities in the 
American Roman Catholic Church have con- 
demned the public schools. And yet the greatest 
of American patriots and statesmen, all along the 
years since the Republic was founded, have de- 
clared the public schools to be absolutely necessary 



224 What Protestants Believe 

to our existence as a free and self-governing 
people. Why does Rome hate our schools? The 
answer is very easy. She knows that if her chil- 
dren are educated with Protestant children in the 
public schools, they will get their eyes open and 
will turn their backs on her silly superstitions and 
forsake her confessional, her bones of saints, her 
dough god and her deified Pope. Rome has never 
been able to endure the light of reason, science, 
history and the word of God. Where she has her 
way, she never does anything for popular educa- 
tion. When the city of Rome and the States of 
the Church became a part of United Italy, ninety- 
two per cent of the people, who had been ruled by 
the popes for hundreds of years, could neither 
read nor write. Ignorance and degradation and 
vice and crime always and everywhere accompany 
Roman Catholic domination. In this country she 
cannot keep her children in perfect ignorance. 
So she has set up her parochial schools, where 
very little is taught that is of any value, and com- 
mands her people to patronize them. The Roman 
Catholic masses would prefer the public schools, 
because they know that they are better than the 
schools which are taught by the ignorant nuns. 



What Protestants Believe 225 

But the priests hold their noses down to the grind- 
stone by threatening to exclude them from the 
privileges of the church. Now the priests are 
demanding that the public money be divided be- 
tween their schools and the public schools. At a 
recent convention of the Knights of Columbus, 
the largest gathering of Roman Catholic priests 
and laymen ever held on this continent, that was 
declared to be the policy and purpose of the Ro- 
man Church. The war has begun. "Death to the 
public school" is the battle-cry of Rome. This is 
the Roman Catholic program: i. Vilify and lie 
about the public schools. Call them godless. 
Charge them with being corrupt and seminaries 
of vice. Fill such magazines as "The Ladies' 
Home Journal" with bitter attacks on this great 
bulwark of liberty. 2. Buy, or frighten, the 
politicians and newspapers to keep silent on the 
subject of the public schools. 3. Secure a division 
of the public school funds between all the religious 
denominations. 4. The church of Rome being 
larger than any one Protestant denomination, and 
many of the Protestant bodies being very small, 
her schools would be the largest and might be 
made to be appear to be the most thoroughly 



226 What Protestants Believe 

equipped and the best. 5. Thus she would 
keep her own children under her influence 
and, ultimately, get most of the children of 
Protestant families. 6. In a few generations, 
the whole country will be Roman Catholic. That 
is the plan. What do you think about it? The 
politicians and the public press ignore the subject 
entirely. If you and I open our lips, they call us 
bigoted and charge us with inciting religious 
strife. For the sake of peace, we must keep still 
and let Rome accomplish her purpose. Shall we 
keep still? No, with the help of God, we will 
make all the noise we can. We will do our best 
to wake up the descendants of the men of Lexing- 
ton and Bunker Hill and Gettysburg and save our 
country from the machinations of the "scarlet 
colored beast." Not one cent of the public money 
shall go to the support of sectarian schools ! Let 
them have their parochial schools, if they will, 
though I believe the State has a right to compel 
all children to attend the public school. But the 
free public school system must be preserved ; and 
all property must be taxed for its support! At 
this point we will not yield a single inch. 



What Protestants Believe 227 

The seventh fact at which I ask you to look till 
it is printed on your eye and your very soul is 
that Rome is determined to capture and rule this 
nation. She is dying everywhere but here. The 
so-called Catholic countries are getting their eyes 
open and are shaking off the shackles which have 
bound them for centuries. The Pope is deter- 
mined to compensate himself here for what he 
knows he is losing there. To a large degree he is 
succeeding. Rome has more power over the gov- 
ernment of the United State than she has over 
any European government. For many years she 
has had her hand on the throat of the administra- 
tion at Washington. Today the Private Secre- 
tary of the President, the officer who has more 
influence with him than any other, is a Roman 
Catholic and a Jesuit. Hear what the Auxiliary 
Bishop of San Francisco recently said to the 
Knights of Columbus : "This country is ours by 
inheritance. This glorious country is ours by 
right, by right of fighting and by right of con- 
quest. This country was found by a great Cath- 
olic. The Catholics have made this country as 
great as it is. This is our inheritance and it is 
your duty as Knights of Columbus to hold and 



228 What Protestants Believe 

keep that inheritance which we found, won and 
are making our own." What would the politicians 
and the newspapers say if a Methodist bishop 
should tell a company of Methodists that this 
country belongs to the Methodists and that they 
must make it exclusively a Methodist country? 
What a howl would go up ! They would call us 
bigots and fanatics and everything bad and vile. 
But Rome can propose to make this country ex- 
clusively Roman Catholic and it is all right. We 
must not whisper a word of objection. The 
"Catholic World," a New York journal, recently 
said: "The Roman Catholic is to wield his vote 
for the purpose of securing Catholic ascendancy 
in this country. All legislation must be governed 
by the will of God unerringly indicated by the 
Pope. Education must be controlled by the Cath- 
olic authorities, and under education the opinions 
of the individual and the utterances of the press 
are included. Many opinions are to be forbidden 
by the secular arm, under the authority of the 
Church, even to war and bloodshed." That is a 
beautiful program! What do you think of it? 
Is the Protestant pastor guilty of stirring up re- 
ligious strife who cries out from his pulpit against 



What Protestants Believe 229 

this open threat of stifling liberty of thought and 
speech in the blood of a free people ? What are 
the weapons which Rome intends to use ? First, a 
consolidated Roman Catholic vote. Every Ro- 
manist must vote as a Romanist, not as an Amer- 
ican. The only issue must be Roman Catholic 
supremacy. The ballot is being thus used. Not 
all Romanists are controlled by the priests; but 
most of them are. They mean well, and intend to 
be patriotic. But their eternal salvation depends 
upon obeying the Pope without a word or thought 
beyond passive obedience. Their next weapon is 
the boycott. Nobody dares say a word against 
Rome, who wants an office or is engaged in any 
business or profession. There are few ministers 
who dare to speak the truth about Rome from 
their pulpits. Influential laymen, who want the 
business patronage of Romanists, will tell them 
that they would better keep still. A prominent 
Methodist pastor was driven from his charge be- 
cause he preached a series of sermons on Roman- 
ism. The proprietor of a large grocery, and other 
business men of the congregation were threatened 
with boycott, if they did not silence that meddle- 
some preacher. He kept on. But when confer- 



230 What Protestants Believe 

ence came, he moved. The third weapon of Rome 
is to get all Protestants crowded out of all the 
gainful and desirable positions in the shops and 
offices and on the railroads. The fourth weapon 
is to fill the highest places in the army and navy 
with Romanists. This they are doing through a 
pliant administration at Washington. Their 
final weapon, which they are getting ready to use, 
if necessary, is the best breech-loading rifle in the 
hands of thoroughly drilled men. That the 
Knights of Columbus and other Roman Catholic 
orders are arming and drilling for war, I am con- 
vinced, though I cannot now give you my 
evidence. 

Unless the sons of America awake, there is 
awful danger ahead. If there be war, it will be 
provoked and begun by Rome. But we ought to 
be on our guard. If only our careless, optimistic 
American people can be aroused ! They have the 
kindest feelings toward their Romanists neigh- 
bors. They cannot believe that Rome has any evil 
designs against us. Not so with the great seers of 
the nation. . President Lincoln said: "I do not 
pretend to be a prophet. But though not a 
prophet, I see a dark cloud and it is Rome. It 



What Protestants Believe 231 

will rise and increase until its flanks will be torn 
by a flash of lightning followed by a peal of thun- 
der. Then a cyclone such as the world has never 
seen will pass over this country, spreading ruin 
and desolation from north to south. After it is 
over there will be long days of peace and prosper- 
ity; for popery will have been swept away for- 
ever from our country/' 

General Grant feared a bloody struggle between 
America and Rome. He so declared in a speech 
at a reunion of the army of the Tennessee, at Des 
Moines, Iowa, September 20, 1876. 

I had a cousin, a talented, refined and well- 
educated lady. Her husband was the proprietor 
of the largest hotel in the world, in the city of 
St. Louis. Shortly after the Civil war General 
Sherman and his family came to live in the hotel, 
while he was commander of that Department. 
The two families became very intimate. The 
General begged the privilege of naming my 
cousin's first child. He was called Skerman Win- 
chester Felt. 

The wife of General Sherman was a Romanist. 
One of his sons became a Jesuit priest. The 
General was an intense Protestant. He often 



232 What Protestants Believe 

expressed his convictions and his fears to my 
cousin. Again and again he told her, basing 
his opinion on what he had found out concerning 
the spirit and intentions of Rome, that the time 
was coming when there would be bloody war 
between America and Rome. 

If war comes, it will be solely the fault of Rome. 
We want peace. We would not deprive our Ro- 
man Catholic neighbors of one shadow of their 
rights. They may worship and believe as they 
will. But they must keep their sectarian hands 
off our Constitution and Laws. They must not 
destroy or harm our public schools. They must 
not take one cent from our public treasury for 
sectarian purposes. We desire the most perfect 
good will to exist between them and ourselves; 
but it must not be at the expense of free speech 
and a free press. We ask them to join with us in 
rendering unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's and we will join with them in rendering 
unto God the things which are God's. "A free 
Church in a free State" is our cry; and we will 
never consent to a "Slave State in any Church." 



"Be it known unto you all, and to all the people 
of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of 
Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised 
from the dead, even by him doth this man stand 
here before you whole. Neither is there salvation 
in any other ; for there is none other name under 
heaven given among men, whereby we must be 
saved," Acts 4:10, 12, 



233 



'This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all 
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world 
to save sinners; of whom I am chief." I Tim. 

1:15- 



234 



I have never yet met a Roman Catholic who 
acknowledged that he had experienced a change 
of heart or had received any special gift or grace 
as the result of the interposition of either priest 
or prelate. — Samuel McGerald, D. D. 



235 



'Tor God so loved the world, that he gave his 
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 
him should not perish, but have everlasting life/' 
John 3:16. 



236 



"If any man sin, we have an advocate with the 
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." I John 2:1. 



237 



There is not an iota of evidence between the 
lids of the Bible of any advocate coming between 
the soul and its redeemer. — Samuel McGerald, 
D. D. 



238 



"He that believeth and is baptized shall be 
saved ; but he that believeth not shall be damned." 
Mark 16:16. 



239 



"Faith of our Fathers ! holy faith ! We will be 
true to thee till death !" 

Samuel McGerald, D. D. 



240 



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